YORKSHIRE Tyne Tees Television has abandoned any thoughts of trying to take over Scottish Television, chairman and chief executive Ward Thomas said yesterday.
He added that he did not believe Granada's Gerry Robinson would make a full bid for YTTV despite sitting on an effective 24% holding. Instead, he could try to merge the conglomerate's televison interests with YTTV to form a separately quoted company.
Last year, YTTV showed strong recovery with annual pre-tax profits jumping 66% to #21.6m.
In common with the whole ITV network, its advertising revenues came under pressure in the second half. However, share of national advertising revenue picked up slightly from 9.6% in 1994 to 10.7% last year on rates 25% cheaper than those charged by Granada.
While Mr Thomas is expecting more than 11% in the current year, he took the opportunity to remind the Laser advertising sales house that at one time there was a 14% market share - its franchises cover 14.7% of UK homes.
Programme sales edged ahead to #71.1m thanks to A Touch of Frost and Heartbeat dominating on the drama front while Emmerdale, which is to run three times a week from the end of this year, does occasionally beat BBC's EastEnders in the ratings war.
Bruce Gyngell, who rescued ailing TV-AM, is to become chief executive, with Mr Thomas staying on for an extra year in an executive role as the television industry is facing a very turbulent year ahead.
Mr Gyngell criticised ITN's News at Ten as Yorkshire has been pushing for its time slot to be altered to allow a clear run for major films until 11pm.
At present, it is a ``corset'' in the middle of a schedule. ``It is two minutes of news and 28 minutes of magazine,'' said Mr Gyngell. If the timing was altered, the industry could sell an additional 1000 minutes of advertising worth between #60m and #70m in a full year.
The company has decided to take no interest in Channel Five and considers that start-up would cost #500m, including #120m of programming compared with ITV's annual #850m.
Asked what level of advertising the new channel could expect, Mr Gyngell retorted ``Channel 5%''.
Warming to his theme, Mr Thomas, who set up Grampian Television in 1961, attacked the free licences granted to both Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB and Channel Four. Before their merger Yorkshire and Tyne Tees bid a total of #52.8m for their franchises.
He admitted there was competition for his two concerns but said the Government should have put in a minimum bid level as Central and Scottish were able to retain theirs for a ``derisory'' #2000 payment.
Including its #64m licence payment, some 85% of operating profits end up with the Treasury.
YTTV is pursuing a very different agenda to most other media companies and has no intention of investing in cable. Mr Gyngell said there was $40bn swirling around the US terrestrial channels in the recent spate of takeovers, while 95% of cable companies are being subsidised through telephone discounts.
The dividend total has been boosted from 4.8p to 14p per share with a 10.3p final for a 1.75% yield. On conventional investment criteria, trading at 35 times 1995 earnings, and maybe just under 30 times for the current year, the shares look dear enough. But the media sector is in the throes of its greatest ever transition.
comment.......................Page 19
FACT FILE
Final19951994
Turnover#262m#245m
Pre-tax profit#21.6m#13.0m
EPS28.7p14.3p
Dividend14.0p4.8p
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 hereComments are closed on this article