Channel 3 News, the consortium which includes Rupert Murdoch's Sky News, has bid to provide the news contract for £32m, compared with ITN's initial bid of £46m.
ITN, which has five shareholders including ITV companies Carlton and Granada, is now said to have slashed its price to £36m in an effort to stay in the running.
Its shareholders are said to be concerned that ITN appears to use the money it gets from the lucrative ITV contract to subsidise other news services. These include its Channel 5 contract, which is worth as little as £3m, and its 24-hour news channel, which the news provider may be forced to close.
BSkyB said last week that it had commissioned research which proved that Carlton and Granada could save £16m if they sold their stakes in ITN and stripped it of its ITV news contract.
The Channel 3 consortium also includes CBS, Bloomberg, Chrysalis and Ulster TV.