ITV Says Sky Sale Is On Track as It Cuts Q4 Content Spending
ITV says its planned sale of most of its business to Sky is "progressing as planned," even as it cuts £25 million ($33.4 million) from its fourth-quarter spending on shows. Chief executive Carolyn McCall gave the update alongside the company's latest trading figures, Variety reported on 11 November 2026.
The deal covers ITV's television channels and its streaming service, ITVX. Comcast-owned Sky agreed in July to pay £1.6 billion ($2.1 billion) for ITV's Media & Entertainment business. ITV expects the sale to close in the second half of 2027.
The deal is not yet finished. On 4 November, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice on the takeover. That is a formal government step that allows ministers to examine a media deal on public interest grounds, such as the range of news and programmes available to viewers.
After the sale, ITV would still exist as a standalone global content group built around ITV Studios, the part of the company that makes programmes and sells them around the world. The studio business makes shows for ITV and for other broadcasters and streamers, so it would keep working in the same way.
Why the cuts? ITV is selling less advertising than it expected. Advertising is the main way the channels and ITVX earn money, because companies pay to show adverts between programmes. ITV expects advertising revenue to fall by 5% to 10% in the fourth quarter of 2026, compared with the same period in 2025. For the full year, it expects a drop of 2% to 3%.
So far this year, advertising revenue has slipped 1% over the nine months to 30 September. In the third quarter alone it fell 8%. ITV blamed economic uncertainty, advertisers moving their budgets to global streaming services, and UK rules restricting adverts for less healthy food, which took effect on 1 October 2025.
To respond, ITV is holding back £5 million ($6.7 million) of spending that does not go on programmes, bringing its temporary fourth-quarter savings to £30 million ($40 million) in total. Its total content budget for 2026 is now projected at about £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion).
For the people who make ITV's shows, the numbers matter. Content budgets pay for cameras, studios, writers and crews, so a smaller budget means fewer commissions or tighter schedules. ITV has not said which programmes, if any, are affected by the fourth-quarter cut.
For viewers, the sale and the cuts both raise the same question: what gets made, and where it appears. Those answers depend on the Sky deal clearing its review and on how the advertising market recovers. Until then, ITV's plan is to keep operating as it has been, with a leaner budget for the rest of the year.
