Granada Plus Shutdown

LONDON (AFX) - ITV PLC said it has agreed to buy Sky Ventures' 49.5 pct
share in multi-channel operation Granada Sky Broadcasting (GSB) for 10 mln
stg.
In addition, Sky would receive 49.5 pct of any proceeds, net of
liabilities,
from any potential sale of Men and Motors, ITV said.
Following the acquisition, GSB's channel Plus will become ITV3. ITV3
launches tonight at 9.00 pm on digital terrestrial television (DTT), digital
cable and digital satellite and will be broadcast to around 13 million
homes.

On Mon, 1 Nov 2004 23:00:09 -0000, "Pig" pig @h.com wrote:

LONDON (AFX) - ITV PLC said it has agreed to buy Sky Ventures' 49.5 pct
share in multi-channel operation Granada Sky Broadcasting (GSB) for 10 mln
stg.
In addition, Sky would receive 49.5 pct of any proceeds, net of
liabilities,
from any potential sale of Men and Motors, ITV said.
Following the acquisition, GSB's channel Plus will become ITV3. ITV3
launches tonight at 9.00 pm on digital terrestrial television (DTT), digital
cable and digital satellite and will be broadcast to around 13 million
homes.

The problem was not just carriage on Sky, but more importantly the
fact that Plus had first claim on the Granada\ITV back catalogue.

It is an interesting deal all round, but it should enable ITV to run
the three channels quite profitably.

I wonder where the older archive programming from Plus goes? ITV is
trying to be trendy and some of the older ITV programming no longer
fits the ITV brand. However it would be a pity to see it disappear
altogether.

Perhaps eventually ITV will find another channel not branded as ITVx
for older archive material. There is plenty of bandwidth on satellite
and once the problems with the Sky boxes is resolved, another channel
could be launched. Perhaps they could call it Plus?