ITV top brass said that Paramount and WBD are back in business as commissioners after agreeing their merger deal. Paramount-Skydance has been busy battling Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery and having beaten Netflix to the punch is back in buying mode.
“WB, and interestingly for us, Paramount, now that they have stability in terms of their ownership and their ambition, they’ve actually opened up business in a way they weren’t open before,” said Carolyn McCall, CEO of UK broadcaster ITV, which also has production and sales house ITV Studios.
ITV Studios boss Julian Bellamy touted recent deals for Love & Marriage: Huntsville, which is on WBD-backed OWN in the U.S, and a sale of drama The Guest to Paramount. McCall said there is increased opportunity to place shows with WBD and Paramount now the merger has been agreed. “We do a lot of business with WBD, and we buy from them as well as we sell to them,” the ITV topper said.
ITV Says No Censorship Of The Brits
ITV reported annual results this morning. The UK-listed company is in talks with Sky over the sale of its networks business, but there was no meaningful update there.
Attention during a Q&A with media homed in on UK matters. Content boss Kevin Lygo did not have a clear answer when asked whether ITV censored a joke about disgraced British politician Peter Mandelson during its coverage of the Brit Awards. Awards coverage is a hot potato in the wake of the furor surrounding the BBC’s transmission of the BAFTA Film Awards.
“There is no policy about censorship, about what people say,” Lygo said when asked about the Brit Awards coverage, insisting the emphasis was on cutting swearing from the broadcast because the show went out before the UK watershed and attracts a young audience.
Pushed on the Mandelson joke that never made it to air, there appeared to be confusion on the specifics. “Was it removed?” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, the thing is, we wouldn’t take out something generally.”
McCall cut in at this point. “Our principles are that you don’t take out something political. You take out swear words, because of the regulations for Ofcom… that’s what the general principle is, and that’s what we’ve had. And just remember, you talk about BAFTA, there was a two-hour gap for them. We had a five-second gap.”
Bigger Than All3Media, Smaller Than Banijay
ITV execs repeatedly touted the size of the 100,000-hour ITV Studios library on the call as well as the scale of the ITV Studios production and distribution business and its growth potential.
Banijay and All3Media announced they are merging, this week. Given that the combined entity will have a 260,000-hour catalog, Deadline asked whether ITV Studios was seeking a similarly transformative deal.
McCall said: “It’s got to be at the right price and it’s got to be at the right time. All3 was always smaller than us, and Banijay was always bigger than us, so the combined identity is going to be bigger than us and that’s fine. For us, the size is not as relevant as the labels and the creative talent.”
She added: “We are very confident that we have scale globally… we’re not going to do something that you might say is transformative if it isn’t at the right value for ITV Studios.”
