Duncan Gray

The proposed sale of ITV's broadcasting arm to Sky has been greeted, for the most part, with a kind of weary inevitability. ITV, the most successful commercial public service broadcaster in British history, is preparing to place its channels, ITVX and advertising operation inside Sky. ITV Studios will remain separate. The programmes, we are told, will remain free to air. The newsrooms will remain editorially distinct. The danger now is overcorrection: waving Sky-ITV through as an act of regulatory penance The temptation is to treat this as sad but necessary consolidation. British broadcasters are too small. Global platforms are too large. ITV's advertising revenues have been moving the wrong way. Sky has the technology and advertising machinery.

Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC has accidentally done Britain a favour. One 'fake news' moment involving the US president has turned what would normally be a media-page squabble into a question on the doorstep: should every household in the UK continue to pay to receive a live television signal, enforceable by law, to fund the BBC? In a world of monthly subscriptions for global streamers, the licence fee has never felt more like an anachronistic tithe. The British public are fed up with the licence fee BBC Charter renewal – due at the end of 2027 – has become an election issue. There's a chasm that needs to be bridged between the BBC's past and the future.