Sky's 17.9% of ITV "restricts competition".

The Competition Commission have ruled that Sky's controversial 17.9% stake in ITV is "against the public interest".

BBC News Online - BSkyB criticised over ITV stake

Sky may be forced to sell it's ITV shares. I'll bet a certain Mr Branson has cracked open a bottle of the finest bubbly on
hearing this news ... and I'm sure that quite a few of us here on TVF are likely to be quite happy with this ruling too.


EDIT: Altered topic title and added topic sub-title.

A step in the right direction, but it's clear Murdoch's lawyers will fight them on this one and no doubt win. Having already been forced out of ITV once (in the 1970s at LWT) I can't see Howling Mad allowing the same thing to happen twice.

Well, the only surprise is the competitions commission saw sense.


I struggle to see now though how it could pave the way for Virgin to get a stake in ITV. Although admittedly minnows compared to Sky, the issues raised would still apply to Virgin too IMO.


Most likely scenario is some sort of deal between Sky and RTL which sees RTL get a stake in ITV and Sky take control of Five - though whether that be good news for Five, I'm not sure.

On the one hand it's Sky - but on the other hand could Five possibly get any worse?

apart from

House
CSI
woman surgeon
Wright stuff

There nothing else!

all of that could go to C4, or ITV!

Not this again...

BSkyB's share of ITV - 17.9%
NewsCorp's share of BSkyB - 39%
Rupert Murdoch's share of NewsCorp - 29%

That gives Rupert Murdoch (roughly) a 2% share of ITV; hardly a controlling share.

It may only be 17.9% in ITV's case, but this is enough to make them the biggest shareholder.

The extra 0.02449% you chopped off could make all the difference...

Here the officially published report from the Competition Commission.

CC PROVISIONALLY FINDS BSKYB/ITV ACQUISITION RESTRICTS COMPETITION

(Adobe PDF format.)

You still seem to think that the company listed on the stock exchange as BSkyB equals Rupert Murdoch; as I pointed out it doesn't.

BSkyB may be a significant shareholder but as the Competition Report shows this has not had any operational impact.