The BBC treats the scheduling clash between Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor as a "game", the head of ITV has claimed.
Peter Fincham has accused the rival network of deliberately orchestrating the clashes between the reality contests.
The director of ITV was asked about the scheduling controversy during a session at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.
He said: "I think there is something in what I say. It's a game to them and it's business to us. That's what I, in a way, wanted to say.
"Take a million or two off the audience of The X Factor and that turns into income."
ITV has released its full schedule for The X Factor shows this year in a bid to evade any blame for the Saturday and Sunday night ratings battle between the rival reality contests.
The BBC has allegedly already moved back the air time of the Strictly launch show on Saturday September 5 so that it overlaps with the third episode of The X Factor.
Mr Fincham said previously: "What happens with billings is that we have a number of exchanges, so on Saturday week there's a Strictly Come Dancing launch show and a third X Factor audition show. And we had a first exchange which had The X Factor show starting exactly where the Strictly show ended. Which is a pretty happy outcome for everybody.
"That revealed to each broadcaster what we were doing, so the BBC knew what we were doing.
"In the second exchange, they moved Strictly 20 minutes later. I don't know why they did that, but it feels a bit like, 'Let's try to see if we can clip The X Factor's wings'."
A BBC spokesman said: "We always try to avoid clashes, but we schedule our programmes with licence fee payers in mind and they tell us they want high-quality entertainment at the heart of the Saturday night schedule."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here