TV sales houses in team-up talks

By

TV broadcasters are understood to be in discussions to merge their advertising sales teams in anticipation of the relaxation of the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) mechanism.

Reports have emerged today that BSkyB and Channel 4 are in talks to consolidate their ad sales team in a major cost saving strategy.

But it is believed that any such a tie-up would be much more widespread and encompass the other industry players, including Five, with discussions currently underway between all sales houses.

A possible consolidation of sales teams would be contingent on the relaxation or abolition of CRR, which would see the market leader, ITV, released from the shackles that restricts the process of selling advertising.

It is also understood that even if Channel 4 were to merge with BBC Worldwide, an industry wide consolidation of sales teams would still be on the cards in a bid to compete against ITV.

Channel 4 recently reported†that total revenues fell 4% to £906.1m in 2008 and advertising revenues fell 4% to £789.7m.

Ids, the sales house owned by Virgin Media TV (VMtv), sells advertising for the VMtv channels, UKTV, Setanta Sports and Virgin on Demand.

Viacom Brand Solutions is the sales house for MTV Networks UK.†

Recommended

Penguin Classics appoints creative consultancy

Marketing Week

Publishing giant Penguin has appointed Figtree to help the publisher begin a brand building campaign around its Classics range. Creative consultancy Figtree will work with the publisher to roll out a number of advertising campaigns around new titles in the range and build an overall strategy to reposition the Classics brand. The activity will begin […]

Latest from Marketing Week