Carlton follows Granada in playing down ad slide

Carlton Communications has echoed rival ITV company Granada in stating that the drop in advertising revenue in the run-up to Christmas will not be as large as expected.

Marketing Week was first to report that the ITV companies had experienced a sudden influx of ad revenue for November and December (MW November 22).

At Carlton ‘s results presentation this week, chief executive Gerry Murphy said ITV’s net ad revenue for the first quarter of the new financial year would be down 13 per cent year on year. This is significantly less than the 25 per cent drop that some analysts had expected.

On a more pessimistic note, the company also revealed that it will have to cut 100 jobs – in addition to the 300 redundancies it has already made this year. It is not clear whether any of these will occur at sales house Carlton Media Sales.

Carlton’s pre-tax profits for the year to the end of September fell from £193m to £118m on turnover up by five per cent – at £1bn.

Last week, Granada said that it also needed to lay off staff: 450 in addition to 650 earlier job cuts. Granada Enterprises is expected to lose 18 posts, mostly through voluntary redundancy or natural attrition.

The two ITV companies are also looking closely at their investment in ITV Digital. The company’s 2,500-strong workforce is expected to be reduced by up to 250 staff. Most of these redundancies are expected to occur among callcentre staff in customer services.