UTV Ireland could be included in potential sale

Just months after being launched, UTV’s Irish television station could be offloaded along with the rest of the group’s TV assets.

Shares in UTV Media yesterday climbed almost 8.5% to 172p as it confirmed it is in talks to sell its television stations.

It further confirmed to the Irish Examiner that any sale would include the Irish station.

The company said discussions are ongoing and may or may not result in such a transaction being agreed.

ITV is believed to be in pole position to snap up the company’s TV stations should a sale go through.

UTV currently holds a ‘channel 3’ licence in the North allowing it to show ITV programming, but the two companies are entirely separate entities.

It has been a turbulent eight months since UTV Ireland was launched at the turn of the year with repeated revisions of its expected first -year losses.

The latest revision in June saw UTV revise upwards its anticipated losses for a third time to €16.2m.

Before the launch, UTV Media had predicted the new station would lose €3m in its first year of operation.

The fledgling Irish station has performed well in the weekday prime time slots with viewership approximately 40% greater than both RTÉ 2 and TV3 as the likes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale continued to attract viewers.

Day-time and weekend viewing has disappointed, however, while its news programming has also struggled to corner a significant share of the market.

One of the problems the station has encountered is TV3’s freedom to continue showing past episodes of popular ITV shows such as Ant and Dec; The Cube and The Jeremy Kyle Show.

In a bid to appeal to the Irish market, big name broadcasters such as Pat Kenny have also been brought in with the veteran presenter fronting a one-on-one interview show before the summer which featured the likes of Tyrone GAA manager, Mickey Harte and Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield.

Should the sale of the group’s TV interests go ahead, the move would signal a clear shift towards the radio market where it has significant operations.

Its radio business is made up of two divisions: Radio Ireland, comprising of eight channels in the Republic and U105 in Belfast; and Radio Great Britain, made up of talkSPORT and 12 local stations.

“Any decision by UTV Media to sell its television assets would mark a departure in the group’s current strategy of growing its television presence in Ireland while selling some of the group’s UK radio stations to bring down debt,” said Merrion Stockbrokers head of research, David Holohan.

UTV is due to report first-half results on Friday.