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Giving evidence as part of the House of Lords Communications Committee’s review of TV advertising regulation, Channel 5 / Five sales director Kelly Williams told the committee the broadcaster would lose revenue if CRR was scrapped.

Since the merger of Carlton and Granada, ITV has been forced to sell its airtime on ITV1 under the terms of Contract Right Renewal, which aims to protect advertisers and other broadcasters from ITV1’s dominant position.

Williams said: "Unashamedly allowing ITV to be unrestricted would have a detrimental affect on our ad revenue."

Under the terms of CRR, the amount advertisers and media buyers spend on ITV1 falls if the audience falls, which offers protection to advertiser and buyers and incentivises ITV to produce programmes which will get higher audiences.

CRR also means that advertisers and agencies, with a pre-merger relationship with ITV, can reduce their spend on ITV1 and still get the same discount, giving them an advantage over new entrants to the market.

Williams said though the current format for CRR should change, "the market needs to be protected" from ITV which has a 48% share of the market compared with Channel 4’s 28%, Sky’s 16% and Channel 5 around 8%. He suggested a "son of CRR" should be created.

Williams gave evidence alongside Channel 5’s head of regulatory affairs Martin Stott, Ann Bulford, chief operating officer of Channel 4, and Channel 4’s director of strategy Gill Pritchard.

Last week ITV chairman Archie . Norman said: "We are driven to look for mass audience so it drives us to the lowest common denominator every time."

Lord Melvyn Bragg pushed the panel on whether they could provide evidence to prove that consumers, as well as advertisers, would be adversely affected by the end of CRR as it was preventing ITV from making certain programming.

Bulford warned against allowing ITV to use CRR as a scapegoat.

"Some of the trends in [ITV's] schedule, such as more episodes of successful soaps, predates CRR," she said. "The trend toward schedules with more peaks in them has always been there."

Pritchard said: "If ITV is allowed to put up prices even when its share declined there would be less spend for other broadcasters and therefore a reduction in public service out put from other broadcasters."

Bragg was personally affected by ITV’s programming cuts last year when the long running culture programme ‘The South Bank Show’, which Bragg had presented since 1978, was cancelled.

In July this year the , just one month after the C.

Other issues the Committee is also looking at include whether there needs to be a full scale review of the TV ad market and whether the rules should be changed so the digital and PSB channels can sell the same number of ad minutes.

Williams said a whole scale market review would "take too long" but suggested there should be a short term review of alternatives to CRR "which will allow us to change the way we trade".

Last year, - the highest five minutes of peak TV seen in the UK since July 2006.