ITV - Cutbacks & Proposed merger

If say for some reason it went ahead where does that leave UTV,Channel and STV.Although they are diffrent companies they are still part of the ITV network aren't they .Or whats left of the ITV Network.

I assume they'll be "forced" into a merger, if that can be legally done?

No, there already a tone of highly paid lawyers wait to go to court if the need be to stop that happening

I'm sure it's easier for ITV to take over STV/UTV than it is C4 / Five, and if they intend to get the Government to allow them to do the latter, then taking over the remaining ITV licences will be childs play, lawyers or not.

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet ?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/4840634/STV-planning-to-opt-out-of-ITV-Network-shows.html

Good for them, and it's about time a franchise takes a stand against ITV's poor decisionmaking.

Could this also be STV pre-empting ITV's claims that STV don't pay ITV Plc enough for networked programming? If they take less of it, it is less of an issue?

So some one has clicked on about this now! I heard about this a few weeks ago.

daytime has a tone of opt out shows, Im sure there have been trying to get morning news slot put back in somewhere!

this also may mean Al Murray's new comedy may not get shown up here if it not great

I was expecting that to be awful (I'm not a fan of the Pub Landlord), but actually it wasn't too bad.

STV haven't really made much use of opting out of the FA Cup coverage, so I don't see things improving for the viewer if they do the same with other ITV prime-time programming, though off peak it's less of an issue.

Do STV/UTV make anything for the network anymore?

UTV have never contributed that much to the network have they?

So if STV already opting out quite a bit, and are going to more, it just puts ITV plc into perspective.

How exactly?