UTV sell TV business to ITV

Reports today that UTV are set to sell the TV part of their business and just focus on radio, with a multi-million pound deal expected to be confirmed this week which will see ITV buy UTV's television business, paying the way for ITV Northern Ireland, leaving just STV as the only non-ITV plc Channel 3 franchise holder in the UK.


http://www.a516digital.com/2015/08/is-utv-about-to-become-itv-northern.html
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/news/end-of-an-era-as-utv-sells-off-its-television-division-to-itv-31469190.html

I'll copy what I said in another thread.....

As someone who has lived in UTV land their entire life I have waited many years for this to happen. It's great news. At last we will get rid of poor presentation, low quality cameras, patronising presenters and hopefully Julian. This is GREAT news for TV fans in Northern Ireland. Only people looking with rose tinted glasses would ever want to cling on to the rubbish that is UTV!

A: Boooo , I do get the feeling it will either be name ITV NI OR UTV name will be kept for a few years to come.

B, So does that mean UTV Ireland will also be sold to ITV? If so I can see that also being rebranded to ITV aswell.

Ah no Tightrope. As a fellow UTV-lander, this is devestating news. I know its never exactly been cutting edge presentation, but it's always been distinctive. And has served Norn Iron well over many troubled years. Standards have slipped a bit in the last few years - especially due to the mass redundancies from the news division, but I shudder to think of that awful generic ITV regional news set with a sofa and a stereotypical 'window' view up the Lagan.

It'll all be very boring. And I fear it'll mean even less commitment to local programming such as Lesser Spotted Ulster which - although bemoaned and mocked by some - is loved by many.

And now on the UTV . . . it's part of our culture.

Excuse me while I wipe the years away from underneath by rose tinted glasses . . .

You won't appreciate what you've got currently until it's gone.

Assuming it's true I wonder what direction ITV will take UTV, will it simply just absorb into the network and the news is 'ITV News (whatever)' or whether it might keep some legacy with increased ITV branding.

UTV Ireland will be an interesting set up, assuming it is sold. It's all ITV Ireland but name.

UTV needs to keep it's name I think, as long as UTV Ireland doesn't have the rights to Britain's Got Talent and The X Factor (which, due to being made by Thames and not ITV Studios, are still on TV3). It'll cause confusion if UTV and UTV Ireland become ITV Northern Ireland and ITV Ireland and the latter doesn't have all of ITV's networked programmes.

ITV Ulster? (Although is there some issues with the 'Ulster'?)

Ulster doesn't refer to all of NI, but just one county. That's why they changed their name to UTV in 1993.

When do those rights end? and it could result in any new deal cover all parts of ITV and STV.

The reverse - all of NI is in Ulster, but not all of Ulster is in NI (Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan being the other three counties). The reason for the name change was the huge viewership in the Republic which they had during the early 1990s - they had more ROI viewers than NI viewers. This fell dramatically after 2000, when a combination of TV3 getting the rights to Granada's (ITV's after 2004) and digital TV (heretofore UTV would have been tuned in to preset 5 on most TVs with analogue cable, but wasn't on the Sky EPG at all and on UPC was at 110 with TV3 on 103). UTV Ireland was their plan to reverse this.

Likely if they do rebrand, the NI station will be ITV Northern Ireland off air but just "ITV" on air.

The ROI station will likely either stay UTV Ireland, become just UTV, or become ITV Ireland.

I suspect ITV NI will have similar output to ITV Wales with extra opt-outs for the province.

Or they might call it ITV, that's pretty much all possibilities covered now.