Studios investment brings 3% revenue drop to ITV

UK broadcaster ITV’s mid-year results show a 3% drop in revenue, which it partly attributes to ITV Studios’ investments.

Total external revenue is down 3% at £1.46 billion from £1.5 billion recorded at the same time last year.

While production wing ITV Studios’ total revenues grew 7% to £697 million, including currency benefits, adjusted EBITA was down 9% at £110 million.

Peter Bazalgette, ITV’s executive chairman (pictured), said: “This was impacted by our ongoing investment in our US scripted business and the fact that the prior year includes the full benefit of the four-year license deal for The Voice of China.”

Despite this, ITV remained positive about its production and distribution arm, saying that it has a strong pipeline of new and returning drama formats, while looking to build further momentum in the US scripted business.

“We continue to grow our global family of production companies and in H1 [mid-year results ending on 30 June] we further strengthened our international drama and format business with the acquisition of Line of Duty producer World Productions in the UK, Tetra Media Studio in France and Elk Production in Sweden,” said Bazalgette.

ITV stated that its guidance for full-year results in 2017 will not change despite the half-year drop.

ITV Studios has experienced a period of change and has recently hired a string of execs. Just this year, Enedemol Shine’s Russ Buchholz was hired to lead ITV Studios America joint venture Circle of Confusion Studios, while Jed Valdecantos and Jim Dietle were hired for the LA scripted programming unit.

More recently, ITV named its new CEO as EasyJet’s former boss Carolyn McCall, who will take up her role in 2018.