Now that ITV has a whole multiplex effectively to itself, this raises a number of very important questions. Although ITV will probably be able to place all of its services (and more) on what was the SDN multiplex, the multiplex is already full up with other channels so various channel carriage contracts will have to expire first before ITV can even think about moving any services across.
Recently ITV has been boasting about the performance of ITV2 and ITV3, but this conceals the fact that ITV1 is continuing to shed viewers. It's likely that ITV is trying to insure itself against future revenue loss and perhaps also protecting itself from a much-rumoured takeover, but if ITV1 continues to weaken this may make ITV even more attractive for a takeover than would otherwise have been the case.
But this raises another point relating to ITV1. At some point it may even be possible for ITV to hand back its Channel 3 regional licences and move ITV1 to the new multiplex as a national channel, though even if such a scenario doesn't happen ITV's ownership of a whole multiplex could make life even more difficult for Top Up TV unless it can somehow acquire unwanted slots elsewhere.
