ITV clashes with its satellite and cable rivals over fee demands
ITV and its cable and satellite rivals clashed yesterday over the commercial public broadcaster’s demand that it should get fees from pay-TV platforms for airing its free channels.
The Commercial Broadcasters Association (Coba), representing Sky, Discovery, Disney and other big pay-TV firms, claimed ITV receives a net benefit of at least £87m a year, because it gets regulatory perks as Britain’s biggest public-service commercial broadcaster.
Coba said ITV’s prominent slot on channel three, and “privileged access” to the TV spectrum “significantly outweigh” the costs of its public-service duties. Coba added so-called retransmission fees could give ITV a benefit of up to £221m and that could “risk harming the rest of the market”.
ITV said the benefit is only around £40m and it was “purely compensation” for its public-service duties such as regional news.