ITV has taken full ownership of GMTV.

For historic reasons, the franchise to broadcast between 6am and 9.25am on the third terrestrial channel is separate from the franchises to broadcast after 9.25am. The breakfast licence is also national, whereas the other third channel licences are regional.

GMTV have held the breakfast licence since 1993.

As the other ITV companies in England and Wales all merged to create ITV plc that company ended up with a 75% stake in GMTV, with Disney owning the other quarter of the company. Yesterday ITV plc bought out Disney.

Intergration

It's thought that ITV plc taking complete ownership of GMTV will result in more integration between breakfast and daytime on ITV1, though GMTV also airs in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the other ITV franchises are owned by different companies, STV and UTV respectively.

Both STV and UTV traditionally air most of ITV plc's English programmes, though STV are increasingly replacing English shows with Scottish-made ones, resulting in a lot of ITV/STV squabbling. Whether that will limit ITV plc's hopes to make breakfast and daytime ITV more cohesive remains to be seen.

Story - CMU Network