{"id":634259,"date":"2026-03-05T15:43:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T15:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/634259\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T15:43:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T15:43:19","slug":"itv-studios-says-wbd-paramount-are-now-open-for-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/634259\/","title":{"rendered":"ITV Studios Says WBD & Paramount Are Now Open For Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tITV<\/a> top brass said that Paramount and WBD are back in business as commissioners after agreeing their merger deal. Paramount-Skydance has been busy battling Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery and having beaten Netflix to the punch is back in buying mode.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWB, and interestingly for us, Paramount, now that they have stability in terms of their ownership and their ambition, they\u2019ve actually opened up business in a way they weren\u2019t open before,\u201d said Carolyn McCall, CEO of UK broadcaster ITV, which also has production and sales house ITV Studios<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tITV Studios boss Julian Bellamy touted recent deals for Love & Marriage: Huntsville, which is on WBD-backed OWN in the U.S, and a sale of drama The Guest<\/a> to Paramount. McCall said there is increased opportunity to place shows with WBD and Paramount now the merger has been agreed. \u201cWe do a lot of business with WBD, and we buy from them as well as we sell to them,\u201d the ITV topper said. <\/p>\n

\n\tITV Says No Censorship Of The Brits<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tITV reported annua<\/a>l<\/a> results<\/a> this morning. The UK-listed company is in talks with Sky over the sale of its networks business, but there was no meaningful update there.<\/p>\n

\n\tAttention during a Q&A with media homed in on UK matters. Content boss Kevin Lygo did not have a clear answer when asked whether ITV censored a joke about disgraced British politician Peter Mandelson during its coverage of the Brit Awards<\/a>. Awards coverage is a hot potato<\/a> in the wake of the furor surrounding the BBC\u2019s transmission of the BAFTA Film Awards.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is no policy about censorship, about what people say,\u201d Lygo said when asked about the Brit Awards coverage, insisting the emphasis was on cutting swearing from the broadcast because the show went out before the UK watershed and attracts a young audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tPushed on the Mandelson joke that never made it to air, there appeared to be confusion on the specifics. \u201cWas it removed?\u201d he said. \u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t know. I mean, the thing is, we wouldn\u2019t take out something generally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMcCall cut in at this point. \u201cOur principles are that you don\u2019t take out something political. You take out swear words, because of the regulations for Ofcom\u2026 that\u2019s what the general principle is, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve had. And just remember, you talk about BAFTA, there was a two-hour gap for them. We had a five-second gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBigger Than All3Media, Smaller Than Banijay<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tITV execs repeatedly touted the size of the 100,000-hour ITV Studios library on the call as well as the scale of the ITV Studios production and distribution business and its growth potential.<\/p>\n

\n\tBanijay and All3Media announced they are merging<\/a>, this week. Given that the combined entity will have a 260,000-hour catalog, Deadline asked whether ITV Studios was seeking a similarly transformative deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tMcCall said: \u201cIt\u2019s got to be at the right price and it\u2019s got to be at the right time. All3 was always smaller than us, and Banijay was always bigger than us, so the combined identity is going to be bigger than us and that\u2019s fine. For us, the size is not as relevant as the labels and the creative talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe added: \u201cWe are very confident that we have scale globally\u2026 we\u2019re not going to do something that you might say is transformative if it isn\u2019t at the right value for ITV Studios.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ITV top brass said that Paramount and WBD are back in business as commissioners after agreeing their merger…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":634260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,40006,40007,45611,270356,173,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-634259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-itv","tag-itv-studios","tag-love-island","tag-ludwig","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116177338596576269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}