Granada's £203m Digital loss

CLOSING down failed terrestrial digital broadcaster ITV Digital has cost Granada £203m in the past six months. The group, the largest ITV broadcaster, said it lost £99m in operating profits and made a further £104m in one-off charges to cover the closure and redundancies.

That means the failed venture has cost Granada almost £700m over the past five years.

The exceptional charges pushed Granada to a £169m loss for the six months ended March, from pre-tax profits of £12m a year earlier. Before one-offs, pre-tax profits fell from £82m to £43m with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation down from £128m to £94m.

Headline earnings fell from 3.3p a share to 1.7p and the interim dividend is held at 1p a share. Chairman Charles Allen said: 'Although the outlook is still unclear, advertising revenues for May will be up approximately 14% and we estimate that June and July will be up approximately 7% and 6% respectively.' He added: 'We are now putting all our energies into driving our core broadcasting and content business. The ITV fightback starts now.'

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