Advance bookings for ITV are up 2% in July, according to industry sources cited by analysts at Merrill Lynch, who had themselves forecast a 2% decline.
Granada is expected to be up 5%, taking the majority market share. “This is a very positive surprise, given that July is the first clean month after the football World Cup,” says the broker.
“We had expected a kind of vacuum in July and an up-turn only in Q4 2002, filling in for the one-off 11 September effect. We believe that the demand from advertisers is not isolated but widespread across a number of industry sectors,” it adds.
Merrill is not changing its forecasts of September year-end down 8% and December year-end down 2.6%, but believes that there is scope for an up-grade at a later stage
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