Speaking at the company's interim results this morning, Allen told shareholders he thought the merger had "a very good case" of winning approval.
Granada this morning reported profits before tax up 35% to £65m. Its shares rose sharply on the news this morning and were up 9% in early trading. By 11am they had lost some ground, but were still up by more than 6% to 76p, while Carlton is up 5.3% to 110.5p.
Allen reiterated the companies' case for the deal, saying that it would allow ITV to compete effectively in the multichannel world, as well as providing "significant benefits for viewers, advertisers and shareholders".
He conceded that the main sticking point continues to be the merger of its sales houses, which would give the company more than 50% of the airtime sales market.
"Frankly, what we spend time talking about is airtime sales," he said. He refused to comment on the proposed hypothetical remedies the Competition Commission suggested yesterday for the sales houses.
One remedy the commission floated for discussion yesterday would ban contracts that committed a share of an advertiser's or a media buyer's annual expenditure for TV advertising, known as "share deals". These deals give advertisers a discount for committing a certain amount of their spend to ITV.
The other hypothetical remedy put forward by the commission, suggests selling off both sales houses. Under the commission's proposals, this could be reviewed after five years to see if the market had changed. It is thought unlikely that ITV would accept this condition.
"We are working closely with the commission to explain the rationale for a single ITV," Allen said.
Allen said that ITV has boosted its programming budget and that its peak-time lead over BBC One so far this year is 5.2 share points, up from 3.6% last time. He added that ITV's cumulative share of impacts, which measures how many people watch advertisements, was 44.4%.
He added that it would look at opportunities in daytime and children's programming.
"Within ITV, we are working hard to attract greater audiences and to market the value of the channels to advertisers more effectively," he said.
Allen said that the outlook for advertising revenues was fairly optimistic, despite June being down on last year, which benefited from the 2002 World Cup.
"The most important sector for us is in fact retail, which represents about 17% of revenues. We have seen that flat at the half year but a slight wrinkle there is. Take the seven months to April and it is up 2.7%."
He said that he expected to see telecoms advertising increase with the launch of picture messaging and third-generation phones.
As well as the merger of Carlton and Granada, the forthcoming communications bill may also relax ownership rules for news provider ITN, allowing Carlton and Granada to take full control of the company.
Allen said that ownership of ITN is "certainly on his agenda". Currently ITV has five shareholders -- Daily Mail Group, Reuters, Carlton, Granada and former ITV company United Business Media -- as no company can own more than 20% in a national news provider.
Yesterday, it was reported that the two ITV companies planned to buy out cable firm NTL from the ITV News Channel and challenge market leaders Sky News and BBC News 24 in the rolling news market.
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