Michael Grade, ITV chief executive, has the support of City analysts for his attempts to end the broadcaster’s contract rights renewal (CRR) mechanism.
The report quotes a major media buyer as saying: “”Our clients want a bigger and stronger ITV, but they want to see it with CRR in place.
“Most of our clients remove a percentage of their money from ITV1 when its audiences are down, but what does not get reported is that 50% of the money taken out by the advertisers stays in the ITV family – they pump it into ITV2.”
The report also quoted Neil Johnston, head of TV at OMD UK, as saying: “ITV is a monopolist – it makes more money than any other broadcaster from advertising. A change in its favour would mean it could take a more dominant position, which would be bad for advertisers.”