The loss is a result of the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) mechanism, which allows advertisers to reduce their commitment to ITV1 in line with any fall in ITV's audience share, while retaining existing discounts.
Many advertisers are expected to move more of their TV spend onto Channel 4, Five and multi-channel.
Questioned at last weekend's Edinburgh TV Festival about reports that ITV may have to 'hand back' £100m to advertisers, ITV chief executive Charles Allen said this was nonsense. He added that he was confident ITV1's audience decline would be addressed by the autumn schedule, claiming the fall was due mainly to a 'terrible six weeks' when ITV1 lost out to Channel 4's Big Brother and BBC Olympics coverage.
However, Mick Desmond, ITV's chief executive of broadcasting and enterprises, later clarified the position to Marketing. He admitted ITV stood to lose £50m of business under CRR, but said it aimed to stem some of this loss by offering deals on sponsorship and ad positions to selected clients.
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