ITV hires EasyJet’s McCall to battle Brexit ad storm

When Carolyn McCall left the media world for the airline industry seven years ago, newspaper publishers were under siege from a shift online that sucked away advertising revenue. Now she’s coming back to run ITV, just as the battleground has moved to television.

Advertisers from food to finance to cosmetics, squeezed by Brexit and a slowing UK economy, are busy shifting television spend to Facebook and YouTube as they reassess marketing budgets. Viewers, meanwhile, are tuning into Netflix and Amazon Prime. TV advertising is forecast to drop 2.7% in the UK this year, according to GroupM. The last decline was in 2012.

ITV is counting on Ms McCall, 55, who is leaving her job as the CEO of EasyJet just as Brexit threatens the access of UK airlines to Europe, to come up with the answers and return a struggling business to revenue growth.