[gunner45]

Originally Posted by Chris

These services exist in order to reinforce the UK’s principle of free-to-air public service broadcasting. Non-PSB broadcasters hop on to Freeview and, increasingly, Freely, because it is in their commercial interest to do so. But their actual reason to exist is the ensure the BBCs channels, plus the three commercial PSBs, (plus S4C in Wales and BBC Alba in Scotland), have prominent, near-universal carriage across the UK.

ITV’s sale makes no difference to these platforms whatsoever. Indeed, if Comcast/Sky were to relinquish ITV’s public service licence, all that would happen is that ITV would lose channel 3 status and Ofcom would launch a new auction for a broadcaster wanting to a PSB licence with the privileges and obligations that come with it.

I don’t think they will want to relinquish the PSB licence though. Aside from soaps, police procedurals and reality/gameshows, ITV is good for nothing and is a pale shadow of what it was achieving when it was constituted of regional networks back in the mid/later 20th century. Losing the high spot in the TV guides where it can pick up casual viewers and opportunities to promote the niche stuff it shows on its 2 3 and 4 channels would be a disaster.

ITVs 2-4, however, I could absolutely see disappearing behind a paywall of one sort or another. There are people stupid enough to pay to watch Love Island. I live with a couple of them.

There's a lot that's right about your post but you hugely underestimate ITV's broadcast and streaming businesses, namely it makes a lot of money from 'low-brow' mass productions and ITVX's 16.5 million monthly active users. And this 'low-brow' stuff is exactly what Sky wants so much as the biggest hole in its armoury is the mass-market free-to-air - a hole it will plug with the acquisition of ITV.