To be fair it’s now over seven years since ITV (UTV and subsequently ITV2) was removed from cable platforms in Ireland, while Sky viewers can only access it through the convoluted Manual Tuning process. Yes it’s on free to air satellite, but a slight majority of homes continue to subscribe to pay TV (about 320k with VM, about 700k with Sky, and a relatively small number with Vodafone) and not all of those who don’t have FTA satellite. So for a lot of people VMTV is their main point of access to ITV programming, which was historically strong in Ireland (up until the mid-2010s UTV would have been listed alongside the main PSB channels in newspapers).
ITV actually owned an equity stake in what is now VMTV during the early 2000s; they were forced to sell under the terms of their shareholders agreement with the now defunct CanWest Global who were in trouble and wanted out. I’m not sure why given the continued dependency almost 20 years later (save for the brief period when UTV Ireland existed) they’ve never sought to buy out, particular during the decade TV3 was private equity owned when they’d have sold for a decent profit. Presumably ITV feel the current arrangement where they get a decent payment and none of the risk is worthwhile enough, and broadcast television will long term decline from here on out anyway.
ITV actually owned an equity stake in what is now VMTV during the early 2000s; they were forced to sell under the terms of their shareholders agreement with the now defunct CanWest Global who were in trouble and wanted out. I’m not sure why given the continued dependency almost 20 years later (save for the brief period when UTV Ireland existed) they’ve never sought to buy out, particular during the decade TV3 was private equity owned when they’d have sold for a decent profit. Presumably ITV feel the current arrangement where they get a decent payment and none of the risk is worthwhile enough, and broadcast television will long term decline from here on out anyway.