Audience and Institution Research Assignment.

Authors Avatar

Media Studies 12C/MD1

Audience and Institution Research Assignment

Hannah Partridge 12E2

“Granada was one of the original ITV franchises, and Carlton gained a licence only in 1991, snatching the weekday London rights from “Thames.”

When Carlton and Granada decided to merge, it was for the central reason of increasing their ITV1 programme budget, which increased by 7%. The merger itself, cost £4.5bn. The companies identified opportunities for making £55m in efficiencies from the deal. The eventual budget is £849m for the current financial year from October 1st to September 30th 2004. This paves the way for a fully consolidated ITV. The merger brings together two of Britain's leading distributors of television programmes and films.

The main reason behind a merger is that the companies will benefit from what is known as economies of scale, this means the company can operate at lower average costs, e.g. it becomes cheaper for them to produce their product or service. The main efficiencies are likely to be made in support services e.g. finance, human resource and estates divisions.

Economic analysts said that the two largest ITV broadcasters who supply 93% of the budget could not have afforded the increase if the merger had been blocked. The outcome would have been managing a business in decline said Kingsley Wilson an investigative Securities analyst.

There will be further comedy programmes and documentaries however; the viewers are likely to have more advertisements at peak viewing times. This of course will pay towards the entertainment.

Join now!

There are many advantages to the merging of Carlton and Granada; the primary advantage is that, they have saved the competition with one another, and now will work together as partners/ as a team; they can share ideas technique (e.g. programme making), equipment, staff and management. The two companies will be able to promote each other to ensure people are aware of all the products offered by that particular company. Another huge advantage would be that they should make more money through reaching more people. This is down to the fact that if all went to plan; as Carlton ...

This is a preview of the whole essay