ITV settles on Channel Islands takeover

UK commercial broadcaster ITV has moved to buy up Channel Islands-based network Channel Television.

The ITV group said this morning it had entered into an agreement with the privately owned Yattendon Group to buy the channel.

The takeover will be subject to the approval of the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority, with a deal expected to be finalised within a month.

Channel TV is one of 15 regional franchises to share the Channel 3 public service licence granted by UK regulator Ofcom. This means they share most of their content, such as The X Factor, but also provide local content including news.

If the deal goes ahead, the number of franchisees owned by ITV will rise to 12. Of the remainder, Scottish Media Group’s Scottish Television and Grampian TV operate ITV’s licences in Scotland and UTV has the one for Northern Ireland.

The move is part of ITV’s plan to become more efficient by cutting costs and improving programme compliance with UK regulator Ofcom. Channel TV is one of ITV’s compliance licensees.

The proposals are not expected to lead to cuts at Channel TV but to bring it into line with other ITV-owned licence franchisees.

A Yattendon statement said: “Channel Television is proud of its strong local heritage and under ITV’s ownership will continue to serve the communities in the islands with high-quality news, information and factual programming.”

Channel TV has been owned by Yattendon since 2001 and is part of the group’s Iliffe News & Media arm. The network serves 150,000 people in 54,000 homes across the Channel Islands.