Following the 's proposal to support public service broadcasting by sharing resources with other public service media organisations announced in December, two developments this week indicated ITV's keenness on a news partnership.
Yesterday, published a leaked email from ITV's head of news, current affairs and sport, Michael Jermey, addressed to his staff.
In the email, Jermey wrote that ITV's senior management believed the "best way forward may be to make medium-term savings through sharing many technical resources and basic infrastructure with the BBC".
Jermey wrote that would prefer to establish such a partnership rather than hand back its public service licence, although an agreement with the BBC would take "years" of drawn-out talks and regulatory scrutiny.
The latter course of action was raised last year as a possibility by Michael Grade if Ofcom's evolving view of public service broadcasting turned out to be against ITV's interests.
Grade also indicated his preference for the news resource sharing proposals in a Daily Telegraph comment piece yesterday.
He described the partnership with the BBC as a solution to ITV's problem of covering the costs imposed by its public service obligations in a multichannel age.
He wrote: "We hope to announce an outline agreement shortly. ITV and the BBC would share facilities, buildings and technology across the UK -- making commercially funded regional news much more cost efficient. But they would still produce separate, competitive news services."
ITV has already proposed cutting back its regional news services to , which is likely to deliver its reaction next week.
Jermey wrote that if Ofcom approved the cuts ITV could create a new regional news structure which would be economically viable until 2012, while the BBC partnership would extend this at least until 2016, when the BBC's charter is up for renewal.
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