ITV has announced plans to restructure its broadcast business.
The commercial broadcaster is establishing a new Media and Entertainment Division with two new business units, Broadcast and On Demand.
The Broadcast business will continue to focus on the delivery of mass audiences – ITV’s main channel continues to deliver 95% of commercial audiences over 5 million.
The On demand unit will include Hub, Hub+ (the ad free version of the Hub) and digital subscription service BritBox.
In a statement ITV said both divisions would be “supported by leaner central support services”.
“Linear channels will be around and be profitable for many years but we also need an On-Demand business which will increasingly be the focus of our new investments in content and technology and which will be our growth engine attracting younger and more targeted audiences to ITV,” said ITV CEO Carolyn McCall.
Kevin Lygo (currently ITV’s Director of Television) will be MD of the Media and Entertainment Division and he will continue to run the Broadcast business unit. Rufus Radcliffe (currently ITV’s Chief Marketing Officer) will head up On-Demand. As a result of this restructure ITV will be recruiting a new CMO as well as a new Chief Operations Officer for Media and Entertainment. Both of these new roles will report to Kevin Lygo.
The process of restructuring has now started and will be fully complete by the end of March 2021.
