The announcement that BSkyB is withdrawing its Sky Sports News channel from Freeview may not be that unexpected but it does raise some interesting unanswered questions in relation to Sky's future strategy, especially given News Corp.'s paywall experiments and the...

BSkyB agrees to cut ITV stake In recent weeks it has been obvious that the "love affair" between politicians and BSkyB - at least in public - has started to thaw, even to the extent that David Cameron's Tories have...

It's been many years since I personally lived in the North East so the story that demolition had begun on Tyne Tees's old City Road studios had passed me by.

ITV to drop Big Ben from News at Ten titles It's no surprise to learn that ITV bosses have decided to partly apportion the blame for relatively low ratings for the return of News At Ten on an old-fashioned a...

ITV faces regional news battle Conveniently forgetting about GMTV (in which ITV have, ahem, a majority shareholding), ITV plc is perhaps unsuccessfully trying to demand that any new regional news franchise operation - namely something that ITV wants but doesn't...

Well if this is not a sad sight for ITV I don't know what is. For the good news is that Primeval will return (good if you like Primeval anyway!) in a deal with UKTV which will see the programme air on Watch afterwards, and BBC Worldwide become the largest co-production partner.

ITV uncertainty could open doors to takeover bid, says analyst If you now have a distinct feeling along the lines that "We've been here before", then you are almost certainly correct, because despite the attempts made by Michael Grade to...

BBC's Sir Michael Lyons weighs into row over Strictly scheduling clash It seems very obvious at this point in time that the BBC Trust has to at least look as if it is doing a useful task, especially as the...

Rule change allows TV product placement When Andy Burnham (the previous Culture Secretary) said that there was no room for paid product placement on British television, the general consensus was that this stance would be relatively short-lived and a change...

Financial Times: Disney to buy Marvel for $4bn. Imagine this: you are webslinging across the New York city skyline, just like Spiderman. You swing round to see the famous Baxter Building, home of the Fantastic Four, twith its big "4"...

More Mark Austin on News at Ten As part of a piece proclaiming that Mark Austin will be doing more News at Ten, is the news that Alastair Stewart is to move to the ITV Evening News, and is to...

Some MediaBlog readers might just remember something I posted nearly a year ago that attempted to explain the effects of the credit crunch, albeit in a somewhat unorthodox fashion. Anyway, I mention this again because the puppet theatre responsible for...

Broadcast Now: Grade slams STV opt outs Michael Grade in "cannot understand STV's attitude" shocker; who would have thought it? From a purely commercial viewpoint, STV's decision to drop the new 9pm incarnation of The Bill seems to have been...

Broadcast Now: ITV digital channels may leave Freeview If such a thing had happened merely two years ago it would have been a bigger deal than it is today. That's my opinion as to the potential impact of ITV withdrawing...

BBC News: ITV 'to charge for Talent clips' At least proving that Michael Grade has either a good sense of humour or a complete lack of perspective, he's just announced that in order to properly monetise reality TV, ITV.com plans...

ITV1 slumps to all-time ratings low This is rather hard to believe even allowing for ITV1's lax summer schedule combined with Wimbledon tennis and the slow but continuing growth of multichannel television; namely the fact that ITV1 suffered the worst...

BSkyB's Mike Darcey attacks 'culture of dependency' in UK television Up to now, BSkyB has enjoyed a near-privileged position as the UK's dominant pay-TV operator, and this has been tolerated not just because of any claimed political influence that News...

Once every so often, a news story breaks of great enough importance that gets the media into such a tizz it makes everything else take a back seat for a while, although the hype on this occasion was just about...

Ben Bradshaw tells BBC: to save the licence fee, share it It's not surprising that the final Digital Britain report has provoked a wide range of reactions, and it was perhaps inevitable that the so-called "top slicing" of the TV...

Primeval dropped by ITV BBC set for clash over plans to give part of licence fee to rivals These two media stories may be fundamentally different in their nature but they both somehow relate to one pressing subject; notably the...

Ah, do you remember the days? Everyone was rushing off pay TV, determined to embrace the world of free to air television. It would be great! Advertising would pay for all the channels. Punters would be able to watch them!...

Granada name to disappear from ITV businesses When Apple Inc.'s Steve Jobs first introduced the Apple TV set top box (which displays media content downloaded from the iTunes Store) during one of his famous presentations, Jobs referred to the product...

ITV to axe The South Bank Show when Melvyn Bragg retires next year The news that The South Bank Show is going to be axed isn't surprising at all to be honest, but it's yet another unwelcome ITV landmark in...

Michael Grade to step down as ITV chief executive This move comes as a modest surprise given the fact that Michael Grade was scheduled to stay on as chief executive for another year, but if he has done everything he...

ITV chief Michael Grade to challenge 'perverse' ban on product placement Product placement has been a 'hot' issue for commercial broadcasters for what seems like a long time - this MediaBlog entry dates back to June 2005 - and by...