ITC Urged To Probe C5 Bids

The ITC has been called on to investigate how two of the bids for Channel 5 were identical, and why Rupert Murdoch’s bid was unexpectedly low.

The two equal bids of £22,002,000 came from Virgin TV and Channel 5 Broadcasting and were called into question in a letter from Mr Graham Allen, Labour’s broadcasting spokesman, to Mr David Glencross, the ITC director general.

Despite Mr Allen’s doubts as to the legitimacy of some bids, there are no real signs that collusion has taken place. Mr Robert Deveraux, head of the Virgin bid said yesterday: “I am certain there was no leak and there was no collusion”. Lord Hollick, a director of Channel 5 Broadcasting, described a very similar process of arriving at a bidding figure.

Should the CanWest bid be rejected, a tie between Channel 5 Broadcasting and Virgin TV could result in a re-bidding. However, Murdoch’s bid of £2m may not be totally excluded; both Grampian and Ulster won their ITV licences after submitting the lowest bids.