ITV - who will take over ?

The world is definitely not their lobster as Hilda might have said, for UK' s major independent terrestrial broadcaster ITV, who have seen advertising revenues in Q1 fell 14% year on year to £351.8 Mn, lowest for 12 years.

ITV1's ratings share for the first 6 weeks of the year has plummeted 7% to 20.5%. Compared with the same period in 2005, Across all channels including ITV1/2/3 the share of the UK audience dropped from 24.2% to 23.2%.Flagship soap, the increasingly dire "Coronation Street" has been cleared by Ofcom after 502 viewesr objected to the use of the term "pure white trash".

ITV has raised £281 Mn in asset sales and is set to sell it's Granada Learning business to
Veronis Suhler Stevenson, the US private equity firm, and is rumoured to be ready to sell off it's 10% stake in Liverpool and Arsenal (who beat real Madrid last night)

ITV is said to be reducing its exposure to advertsing based businesses, - it acquired Friends Re-United for £170Mn in December from the husband and wife founders Steve and Julie Pankhurst.

Ever since re-launch there has been there has been speculation of a take over and break up.

US value investor Brandes, which owns 7% of the network, and Fidelity, are waiting patiently - a bid approach from Time Warner last year foundered on concerns over the size of the network's £580m pension fund deficit.

On the programming front BBC News has announced that Craig Oliver Currently Head of Network Programmes at ITV News will be the new Editor of BBC ONE's Ten O'Clock News.