If ITV plc takes over ITN.

If ITV plc, which owns 40% of Independent Television News Ltd (ITN), buys the other 60%, it'll probably rename the organisation ITV News Ltd (and yes, I do know that ITV stands for Independent Television).

In that event, would the ITV plc regional news operations outside the London region still be legally separate from ITV News Ltd, e.g. ITV Yorkshire Ltd, ITV Granada Ltd, ITV Meridian Ltd?

Is there suggestion that ITV plc. want to buy the whole of ITN?
ITN has a big name across the world, I assume ITV would probably retain the brand, especially in cases such as C4/C5 where they provide the news.

Why wouldn't they be? ITN only produces the news for one region and that ITV London...

At one point ITV were specifically precluded, in law, from owning ITN entirely. Is this no longer the case ? (I have a feeling it isn't)

The ban on ITV owning all of ITN was removed by the Communications Act of 2003.

I asked the question because renaming ITN as ITV News might cause confusion because the renamed ITN would still be legally separate from those regional news operations (and I did refer to regional news outside the London region ). That indicates that I was already aware of the fact that ITN produces the London regional news.

Former ITV boss Charles Allen wanted it to happen. He tried to force the other owners of ITN to sell their shares of the organisation by threatening to take the national news in-house. There was a fear that Allen would do that - as was documented by Richard Lindley in his book "And Finally?"

I read somewhere (not can't find it now) that channel 4 said they would look elsewhere for news if itv took full control of ITN.

That's a comment from 15 odd years ago though. ITV already supply some of C4's most important programming, so it really shouldn't be a problem for them to supply the news too - and certainly preferable to Sky News I'd have thought too.

Here's a thread on the matter from 2006.

http://www.tvforum.co.uk/thenewsroom/itv-abandons-plans-itn-21236/

According to the Financial Times (4 January 2011), talks that took place in 2006 involving Dawn Airey, who was then controller of Sky Television, and the chief executives of ITV and ITN on merging their news operations reached an advanced stage and identified major savings for both broadcasters before they were dropped because BSkyB bought a £940m stake in ITV.

The proposed merger would have seen the news on ITV and Channels 4 and 5 provided by one company that, according to people involved in the talks, would have been controlled by BSkyB.

An executive president who was at the 2006 talks said there would have been huge financial savings for both ITN, which was struggling to break even, and Sky News, which was losing tens of millions a year and where Dawn was under pressure to cut costs.

Another attendee said that the talks were pretty productive and would have reached an outcome if circumstances had not intervened.

Nice to know I've got my finger on the pulse