ITV are now eyeing up STV

They could keep the oppt outs - but an single STV brand for scotland and shared coverage of Scottish poltics and pan Scottish news.

This. Has the average UTV viewer had a better service under ITV? I'd say so. It wasn't a political hoohah in NI. Holyrood may kick off a little but it would die down pretty quickly.

Without derailing into politics, it actually puts ITV Scotland In a stronger position if independence actually happens; giving the Scottish franchise access to the ITV Network Schedule is an easier thing to do if the company is part of ITV Plc in the first place, rather than the current affiliation setup where it would be "easier" to argue that STV Group should acquire English programmes from ITV in the way any other foreign broadcaster might.

No, I wonder if they (ITV Ltd) were leaned upon by Ofcom to do that, as part of the licence split separating
'West' from 'Wales' ?

My suspicion is that an STV takeover by ITV paves the way for ITV to be put up for sale. ITV will be a far more attractive company to a buyer with Scotland than without.

My suspicion is Liberty Global will be looking at them closer than ever.

I think this is why such a transaction hasn't happened - yet. If you've got the whole lot it's a much easier sell.

Also, with a single ITV it's arguably easier to do what the BBC didn't and do a Scottish Six (or Six Thirty!) - Iogistically it's then easier to share the network correspondents and reports, things like that. It would certainly be very interesting.

ITV owning STV wouldn't make it that more attractive to a buyer.

ITV plc's market cap of £5.7bn dwarfs STV Group's £134m

A £200m ITV bid for Scottish television network STV is 'inevitable', says investor with big stake

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-6450337/Largest-shareholder-STV-slaps-200m-price-tag-company-amid-takeover-rumours.html

Crystal Amber have pretty much named their price to ITV plc to sell their stake. If Threadneedle agree with this price, then STV Group plc could well be sold in the not too distant future.

It's a convenience game more than a numbers game. Imagine you were a foreign media corporation looking to buy ITV. It's a lot more convenient to you if ITV covers all of Britain rather than (the major) part of it and you don't have to faff about supplying networked programmes to a separate company, namely STV.

This. A single ITV is an easier sell as the incoming owners don't need to faff about with a 3rd party.

Although, I do wonder if ITV would prefer a bidding war over itself, rather than just the one vulture circling.

If STV is sold to ITV, and if Liberty Global does launch a bid and win - given what we've seen over the other side of the Irish Sea - does any Ofcom rules on channel names rule out ITV becoming VM3 over here?

The ITV brand is very strong it's very unlikely it'd rebrand.