British broadcaster ITV has announced £30 million in temporary cost savings for the fourth quarter of 2026, including £25 million from content expenditure and £5 million from discretionary non-content spending, as it responds to weakening advertising revenue and continued pressure on its traditional broadcasting business.
The savings come against a full-year content budget of approximately £1.2 billion. ITV has indicated that the reductions will not affect jobs, although the decision to scale back commissioning expenditure highlights the financial pressures facing broadcasters as advertising markets remain challenging.
The broadcaster expects fourth-quarter advertising revenue to decline by between 5% and 10%, while full-year advertising revenue is forecast to fall by 2% to 3% compared with 2025. Total advertising revenue had already declined by 8% in the third quarter.
For the nine months to September 2026, ITV reported group revenue of £2.76 billion, representing a 1% year-on-year decrease. The company has also revised its adjusted operating margin expectations, now guiding towards the lower end of its previously indicated 13% to 15% range.
ITV Chief Executive Carolyn McCall attributed the weaker performance to ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, increased competition from global streaming platforms in the digital advertising market, and the impact of less healthy food advertising regulations introduced in October 2025.
Despite the pressure on traditional advertising, ITV’s digital operations continue to record growth. Digital revenue increased by 7% to £461 million, while its streaming platform, ITVX, recorded more than one billion streams for a third consecutive quarter. By the end of October, ITVX had accumulated 3.6 billion streams, already exceeding its total for the whole of 2025. Viewing on its free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels also increased by 31%.
ITV’s Proposed Sale To Sky Remains On Track
A significant development for the company’s longer-term strategy is the planned sale of its Media and Entertainment business to Sky. ITV confirmed that the agreed transaction remains on track for completion in the second half of 2027.
McCall described the UK Secretary of State’s public interest intervention notice, issued on 4 November, as an anticipated regulatory milestone rather than a setback to the transaction. Analysts have valued the proposed sale at up to £1.6 billion, including a potential £200 million contingent payment linked to advertising performance in 2027.
For African broadcasters, ITV’s latest results highlight a challenge increasingly affecting television markets worldwide: growing digital audiences are not necessarily translating into stronger advertising revenues. The company’s experience demonstrates how broadcasters are having to balance investment in streaming platforms with cost controls and adjustments to content commissioning as traditional advertising income comes under pressure.
