Government planning to Sell Channel 4

[gottago]

To me, ITV or Discovery seem incredibly likely - I can't really think of any other major players who would want to buy C4

doubt it'll be ITV, given the total overlap in terms of being a PSB with prime EPG placement. Aside from the competition concerns, why would they need another prime slot

... to make more money?

ITV buying C4 makes a lot of sense in terms of seriously beefing up their VOD offer. Merging ITV Hub and All4 would be a significantly more competitive product than what ITV currently has. Where ITV struggles in factual, C4 (normally) flourishes and there is potential for both channels to be repositioned slightly to focus more on their strengths. There's also actually surprisingly little crossover with much of their digital channels, they all target slightly different audiences aside from E4 and ITV2 (although I know E4 is repositioning itself internally to target a slightly older audience).

I can't really see it getting past competition regulators though TF1 and M6 are merging in France so not necessarily impossible.

[NancerOnTheLIVEForum]

Just saw a Discovery+ ad on All 4. Has this happened before?

[JAS84]

Channel 4 ads have aired on ITV in the past (and I mean in recent years, not just in the 1980s when it was effectively ITV 2), so advertising rivals isn't unprecedented. Channel 4 would've been hypocritical if they'd turned down Discovery's purchase of advertising time.

[Brekkie]

Yes - channels and on demand services have long advertised on each other. Discovery+ advertising is no different to Netflix advertising, or indeed UKTVPlay which seems to be the most promiment ad on All4 at the moment.

[NancerOnTheLIVEForum]

Now I've just got an ITV advert. This is getting ridiculous