That's my understanding yes. They cannot hand it over until after the sale closes, because until it does there is always the possibility that something could happen to derail it. I understand the last consent left is Ministerial approval.
Even after the sale does close, they'll probably play out for a while until TV3 firm up their plans for it.
Same ITVBe trailer shown on ITV also shown on UTV.
A first?
Yep. Was a bit of a foregone conclusion that ITV would start promoting its other channels on UTV. What puzzled me a little is that ITV 2/3/4/Be/Encore trails weren't phased in before now.
Is that the first time UTV have
ever
had a local announcement at 06:00?
I can't recall UTV ever covering that link. Until 1988, we joined TV-am with no lead-in announcement. When the Night-time service started, UTV took the Granada overnight service. And since the early-2000s, the generic overnight ITV service has done the honours (albeit an announcerless intro in more recent years).