As U.K. public service broadcaster ITV prepares to be swallowed up by Comcast-owned Sky (the pact still needs to clear regulators, which could take up to a year), managing director Kevin Lygo is staying positive.
“I think everybody understands the logic of it and why it’s such a good idea and a good deal,” said Lygo, speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday. “But there’s uncertainty, and everybody gets a bit worried about uncertainty.”
One of the prime reasons for that uncertainty, Lygo explained, was that as part of the legal process underpinning the deal, neither side can talk about what will happen if and when it finally closes – including what it impact it will have on jobs. “Neither Sky nor us [can] talk about individuals or what the merger will do,” he said.
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Until the day the deal closes, ITV “will continue as we are now to run our business completely separate from Sky,” Lygo said. With that expected to take up to a year, Lygo said ITV’s commissioning strategy for 2027 and “most of” 2028 would remain unchanged.
When asked whether he thought the deal was likely to slow down commissioning, Lygo sidestepped the question, saying: “Everything has so dramatically changed just in the last few years that scale, as everyone talks about, is important and really you need to be bigger, you need to be funded in a significant and continuing manner, and I think what the deal with Sky will do is underpin what we need to continue doing what we do that really matters.”
He pointed out that Sky will need to adhere to ITV’s PSB license throughout its term, which currently runs until 2034, including all the “regulatory constrictions and promises of that.” That includes commitments to news and independent production spend outside of London.
Lygo is hopeful that the broadcaster will remain intact beyond the term of its license. “We’ll have to wait and see,” he said. “But Sky wouldn’t be buying us for all that money if they wanted to rip us apart and destroy us and change what we are and so forth. So I think you’ll see gradual changes, probably changes backstage you don’t even notice.”
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