Revenue 2023: £3.624 billion (€4.1665 billion)

ITV is the leading privately owned television company in the UK. With two divisions: ITV Studios produces/distributes programs worldwide, Media & Entertainment operates the largest British private broadcaster ITV.

General Information

Headquarters
2 Waterhouse Square, Holborn
London EC1N 2AE
Great Britain
Phone: 0044 20 7157 3000
Website: www.itvplc.com    

industryn: TV, production, distribution, rights trading
legal form: stock corporation
fiscal year: 01.01.-31.12.
founding year: 1934 Granada, 1985 Carlton, 2003 ITV

Economic baseline data (in million £)

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018
Revenue	3.624	4.345	4.042	3.260	3.308	3.211
Profit (EBITA)	404	688	784	573	729	810
Share price (in £, year-end)	63,12	75,16	110,55	106,80	149,80	126,50
Employees	7.187	6.825	6.618	6.273	6.416	6.281

Executives and Directors

Management:

• Carolyn McCall, chief executive
• Chris Kennedy, COO, CFO
• Ade Rawcliffe, Group Director of Diversity and Inclusion
• David Osborn, Chief People Officer
• Julian Bellamy, Managing Director, ITV Studios
• Kelly Williams, Managing Director, Commercial
• Kevin Lygo, Media and Entertainment
• Kyla Mullins, General Counsel and Company Secretary
• Magnus Brooke, Director of Strategy, Policy and Regulation
• Paul Moore, Group Communications & Corporate Affairs Director
• Rufus Radcliffe, MD, Streaming, Interactive & Data
• Simon Farnsworth, Chief Technology OfficerLéon Seynave, Member of the Board

Supervisory Board:

• Andrew Cosslett, Chairman
• Carolyn McCall, chief executive
• Chris Kennedy, COO, CFO
• Dawn Allen, Non-Executive Director
• Edward Bonham Carter, Senior Independent Director
• Gidon Katz, Non-executive Director
• Graham Cooke, Non-Executive Director
• Kyla Mullins, General Counsel and Company Secretary
• Margaret Ewing, Non-executive Director, Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee
• Marjorie Kaplan, Non-Executive Director
• Salman Amin, Non-executive Director
• Sharmila Nebhrajani, Non-executive DirectorPiet Vroman, Chief Financial Officer of de Persgroep

History

The history of ITV is the history of the consolidation of the British private television market. In 1954/55, "Independent Television" was introduced as an advertising-financed alternative to the public broadcaster BBC, divided into 15 regional licenses, which, like Germany's ARD television, were to form a joint program with regional windows. As a commercial broadcaster, ITV is nevertheless considered a "public service broadcaster" and must meet quasi-public service requirements regarding the scope, quality, and balance of news and information programs. By the end of the 1990s, two media companies had established themselves: Granada and Carlton controlled 11 of the 15 ITV licenses.

Granada was founded in 1934 to take over a chain of cinemas. A year later, it went public, and until the 1970s, when movie palaces were transformed into bingo halls, the company was one of the largest nationwide cinema operators. With the launch of ITV in 1954, Granada entered the television business with the license for the North of England. Granada Television broadcast from Manchester, invented the daily soap (Coronation Street has been running since 1960), and was one of the most profitable TV companies in Britain.

Carlton began in the printing industry and moved into film and television production (post-production, special effects) in 1986. This was achieved with the purchase of a 20 percent stake in ITV's Central. Following the Thatcher government's initial deregulation of the TV market, Carlton was awarded the London regional market when the licenses were re-allocated in 1991. In 1993, Carlton acquired the remaining 80 percent of Central TV. By 2000, four more ITV licenses had been added.

Carlton and Granada had been collaborating since 1998 to build their own digital pay-TV platform, but ONdigital became one of the biggest flops in British media history. In April 2002, the project, which had recently been renamed ITV Digital, was shut down. The two companies had collectively lost around half a billion pounds.

Carlton and Granada had also negotiated a merger – initially without success. A merger would not have complied with the antitrust regulations in force at the time. The situation changed when the Blair government passed significantly liberalized media laws in May 2002: Previously, a TV company was only allowed to hold a maximum of 15 percent of all advertising bookings in the free-to-air TV sector. However, this regulation was now overturned, as was the division of the London metropolitan area into two ITV licenses, one for weekdays and the other for the weekend. The path to a unified ITV was clear, and in October 2002, the six billion pound merger of Granada and Carlton was completed. However, due to reviews by the antitrust authorities, it took almost a year and a half before shares in ITV plc were first traded on the London Stock Exchange on February 2, 2004.

After being hit hard by the financial crisis and falling advertising revenues, the company managed to turn things around in 2011 under new CEO Adam Crozier. By the beginning of 2013, the economic situation was so positive again that there was speculation about ITV as a takeover candidate in Europe. The British media company's share price had almost doubled since 2005. ITV plc also announced the payment of a special dividend of around 156 million pounds. And it bought production companies such as The Garden in April 2013 for around 18 million pounds. This was followed by investments in the US production company High Noon Entertainment, Thinkfactory Media, Big Talk Productions and DiGa Vision. Finally, in October 2015 it was announced that ITV was buying the TV division of UTV Media for 100 million pounds.

Business Units

ITV plc is divided into the business segments "Broadcast & Online," "Direct to Consumer," and "ITV Studios." ITV broadcasts a wide range of programs across its family of free-to-air channels and the "ITV Hub," which can be found on, among other platforms, the ITV website. The free-to-air channels include ITV2 and ITV3, the two largest channels in the UK, as well as ITV4, CITV, and ITVBe. ITV2 is the most watched channel among 16- to 24-year-olds.

One of the direct-to-consumer services is "BritBox," available since November 2019. This video-on-demand service, developed in collaboration with the BBC, aims to offer consumers a wealth of series, including many British ones. "Britbox US" will also offer British programming in the United States and Canada.

ITV Studios produces content for the UK and internationally for a total of 12 countries. The distribution businesses Global Entertainment and Talpa Global sell the finished TV formats worldwide. ITV Studios includes ITV Studios UK and ITV America. ITV Studios also operates in Germany, France, Italy, Australia, the Nordic countries, and the Middle East. In the Netherlands, ITV operates through Talpa Media.