When it was announced in April, the deal was viewed positively by commentators. Subsequent to the deal, the Office of Fair Trading said in June that it was to investigate on competition grounds, although a spokesman for ITV said that the network anticipated the OFT would approve the deal.
Having ownership of SDN means ITV controls 10 transmission slots on Freeview, including those currently used by Five, Disney, UKTV Gold, Cartoon Network, Discovery and shopping channel QVC.
It could also launch more of its own digital channels, as ITV chief executive Charles Allen explained when the deal was first announced.
"Initially, ITV will benefit from a new source of revenue but critically, this ensures that ITV has the opportunity for future capacity on the digital platform where its highly successful family of channels performs best," he said.
ITV currently has five channel slots on Freeview, including ITV News and ITV3, after it paid in the region of £5m to buy an extra channel slot from Crown Castle. ITV will launch ITV4 as a rebranded version of Men & Motors on November 1.
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