The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said she is “minded to intervene” in Sky’s £۱.۶bn purchase of ITV, in a move that paves the way for deeper scrutiny of a deal that would create the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster.
Sky announced over the summer that it had reached a deal to buy ITV’s broadcasting and streaming arm, representing a major shift in the ownership of Britain’s public service media.
Sky, which is itself owned by the US giant Comcast, sees the purchase as a chance to create a “UK-focused national streaming champion” that can survive in a media world dominated by Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video.
Nandy said she was issuing her decision in relation to a series of “public interest considerations”.
They included the need for free expression of opinion in news media, a “sufficient plurality of views” and a “sufficient plurality of persons with control of the media enterprises”.
She said she also had to safeguard the availability of “a wide range of broadcasting, on-demand programmes or both, which … is of high quality and calculated to appeal to a wide variety of tastes and interests”.
The move is a formal part of the takeover process. The companies now have five days to respond.
Should she decide to intervene in the process, it would trigger formal investigations into the deal by Ofcom, the media industry regulator, and the Competition and Markets Authority.
With the TV industry under huge pressure as competition has increased from streamers, and audiences have switched to digital platforms such as YouTube, few in the industry believe the deal will be blocked.
There have already been huge mergers across the media world, as even major players believe they need greater scale to compete in what is now a global marketplace.
Even Netflix attempted to buy Warner Bros Discovery before it was eventually bought by Paramount in a mega $۱۱۰bn (£۸۵bn) acquisition. The new company, now called Skydance, will have David Ellison, the son of a billionaire tech mogul, at its helm.
Nandy also threatened to intervene in that deal, as the UK’s Channel ۵ is also owned by Paramount.
However, she eventually waved it through after securing significant concessions over its commitments to the UK and the content shown there.
Under the UK guarantees, Paramount’s Channel ۵ will continue to operate as a public service broadcaster until the end of ۲۰۳۴. Channel ۵ News will retain its editorial independence and will remain separate from other news operations covered by the merger, CBS News and CNN International.
