Carlton and Granada merger -LATEST NEWS

I've just been watching BBC News 24 (yes it does happen once in a while) and they announced that the merger between Carlton and Granada will be announced later today!

I can't wait to see the outcome!

Apparently it's at 11:00.

Sky News is showing a nice little montage of old regional idents.

Oh, and the merger has been given the go ahead... with conditions.

Yes the ITV News Channel took a break early and began the 11:00 hour at 10:57 so they could build the story up to the 11:00 oclock annoucement!

heres some earlier caps:-

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News 24 just announced the merger is to go ahead with some provisos to keep the advertisers happy. There is also mention of ensuring regional licenses remain.

So, it looks as if it's going ahead. They don't have to sell their ad sales houses. The result is certainly better than expected (from Carlton/Granada's point of view).



Yes, although the merged company will ask if they can discontinue their annual payments.

Nina Nana joined Felicity Barr in the studio and Dan Rivers reported live from Carlton headquarters!

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Henk Potts also reported from a financial point of view from the ITV news room.

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Felicity Barr has been VERY good chairing this story!

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Shadow Media Minister, John Whittingdale, was also questioned live from the Tory party conference in Blackpool and stated that programme quality should increase and regional programming should be strengthened! Lets hope he is right!

Felicity has been extremely good.

She asked this question. for TV Forum users I presume: "What about the regional identity of the itv regions? We're all used to watching Meridian, HTV etc. Will this affect the regional identity?" Don't know where she has been for the last few years, but never mind.

Felicity Barr is awful.

She has the sort of on-screen persona that belongs only on a local, midwest American TV station.

Get her off.

As for the merger... think it's all a bit of a nonsense. They are reported going to make savings of £55 million, Wow. There's really not a massive amount you can do with that across 12 different stations.

I thought that Felicity Barr was just a bit-part sports reporter but she has really controlled this hour and has gone up in my estimation.

Also did anyone see her on Richard and Judy and Monday at 5pm yesterday? She was all glammed up to talk about the premiership rape allegations and was also really good at taking Max Clifford on!

She is going to be bigger than Katie Derham! I for one would like to see her more on ITV1!

Also when she kept mentioning regional tv HTV was at the top of the list each time. This is probably because in the last hour there were quite a few reports from HTV!

There's only one thing concerning me with this story is that each news channel is referring to a different amount of stations that ITV Plc will own once Carlton and Granada merge.

Some say 12 others say 13 - who is correct and how do they include HTV?

Is Henk a reporter now? I thought he was a city / tradery / analysty type bod. He has popped up on Celebdaq before now, as an interviewee? I thought he was, like Justin Urquhart-Stewart, more of a pundit, rather than a reportery type.

Those who say 13 are probably counting HTV West & HTV Wales as individual companies, which they're not.