ITV Studios rescues ITV during tough summer for ads

ITV’s production arm helped the UK commercial broadcaster increase revenues during the third quarter ending September 30. Despite a growing online audience, the broadcaster reported ailing ad revenues as summer events including the Olympics and Queen’s Jubilee impacted its performance.

ITV saw its content unit ITV Studios bring in £498 million (€622 million) of revenue during the quarter, an increase of 20% year-on-year. However, with ad revenues down 6%, overall revenues increased by just 4% to £1.573 billion.
The broadcaster was particularly impacted by the BBC’s coverage of the Olympic games during the summer, with revenues down 10% in July and 9% in August. September revenues were down just 1% year-on-year.

“This has been an extraordinary year for UK television with many unique events including the Queen’s Jubilee, The London Olympics and the Paralympics,” said ITV CEO Adam Crozier. “In fact nine out of the top 10 programmes aired will not return next year and as we expected this has affected our viewing performance.  However, we do not expect our viewing performance in 2012 to impact our advertising share in 2013 and we are focused on growing our share of viewing next year.”

ITV’s digital audience continues to grow, with a total of 321 million requests for long form video across all online and on-demand platforms between January and September, compared with 262 million requests for the corresponding period in 2011.