Media In The City: Sky Could be Forced To Reduce ITV Stake

Last week there were reports that the Competition Commission could force Sky to reduce its stake in ITV to under 10%.

A report in the Financial Times said that competition regulators are set to recommend to business and enterprise secretary John Hutton that Sky should reduce its holding from 17.9% to between 5% and 10% (Full Story).

ITV released a trading update for the 12 months to December 31, announcing that it has stabilised its ad revenue (Full Story).

The broadcaster said that its net advertising revenue was down 0.6% across all of its channels, compared with an 8.4% fall last year, while ITV1’s ad income dropped 4.4%, an improvement on the 12.4% decline in 2006.

Trinity Mirror, meanwhile, reported increased advertising revenues of 2.1% for the five months to the end of November.

The group added that its nationals division advertising revenues increased by 5.6% compared with a fall of 2.3% for the first half, resulting in an increase of 1.0% for the 11 months to November (Full Story).

Johnston Press revealed that its overall advertising revenues increased by 0.2%, with like-for-like UK print advertising revenues declining by 0.8% in the second half of the year (Full Story).

In a pretty varied week, Aegis added to its presence in South Africa, acquiring independent media agency Full Circle Media (Full Story).

The acquisition of Full Circle Media followed the acquisition of Trigger, a digital marketing specialist, in May of this year, and the launch of Vizeum South Africa in September.

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