Advertising revenues plummeting at ITV amid hopes production arm won't be hit by Trump tariffs
The company expects revenues to tumble 14 per cent in its second quarter following a 2 per cent slide in the first three months of its financial year.
It blamed strong comparatives from a year earlier when trading was buoyed by the Euro 2024 football tournament.
And it is assessing the 'possibility of trade tariffs in the US', but thinks its ITV Studios business should not suffer a direct impact if Donald Trump imposes a 100 per cent levy on international films.
'ITV Studios only produces TV programming and therefore does not anticipate any direct impact from the imposition of tariffs on films,' it said.
Its ITV Studios division – producer of hits including Mr Bates vs The Post Office, Fool Me Once, starring Michelle Keegan for Netflix, and the Disney+ adaptation of Jilly Cooper's novel Rivals – notched up a 1 per cent rise in first-quarter revenues as it returned to growth after the impact of the 2023 US actors and writers strikes.
But total group revenue fell 1 per cent to £875million, piling pressure on chief executive Carolyn McCall as she battles to revive ITV.
She warned the 'macroeconomic environment is uncertain' as the shares fell 1.3 per cent, or 1p, to 78p.
They are down around 70 per cent in the past decade.
ITV has held talks about merging the Studios arm with All3Media to create a company worth more than £3billion.
All3Media is owned by the Abu Dhabi-backed investment group Redbird IMI, and its production hits include TV show The Traitors.
Banijay, the French group behind Big Brother, is also exploring a takeover of the Studios arm or the entire ITV group.
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The Independent
3 minutes ago
- The Independent
Foxy Knoxy no more: How Monica Lewinsky and Amanda Knox teamed up to reclaim Knox's narrative
Monica Lewinsky is keenly aware of what it feels like when your name is no longer your own and becomes attached to a character conjured by others. An affair that she had with President Clinton nearly 30 years ago as a White House intern made her an international headline. So, when Lewinsky read that Amanda Knox, another woman whose image precedes her, wanted to adapt her memoir for the screen, she felt she was in a unique position to help. Knox was on a study abroad program in Italy in 2007 when one of her housemates, Meredith Kercher, was killed. She and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito quickly became the prime suspects. The story was a tabloid sensation and Knox was branded Foxy Knoxy. After a lengthy trial, she and Sollecito were convicted of Kercher's murder and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison; they were later acquitted and exonerated. Knox has already told her story in two memoirs and it's been dramatized by others. There was a Lifetime movie about the case and she believes the 2021 movie "Stillwater" starring Matt Damon was unfairly familiar. 'I have a story to tell because I have a mission, and my mission is to help people appreciate what really is going on when justice goes awry," Knox said about why she entrusted Lewinsky to help tell her story through 'The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox." 'This woman, who has gone through her own version of hell where the world had diminished her to a punchline inspired me to feel like maybe there was a path forward in my life," Knox said. The limited series is now streaming on Hulu. Grace Van Patten ("Tell Me Lies") stars and both Knox and Lewinsky are among its executive producers. Shared but different trauma Lewinsky was not always in a place to help others reclaim their narrative because her own was too much to bear. She remembers vaguely hearing about Knox's case but didn't have the energy to give it attention. 'I was allergic to cases like this,' Lewinsky said. 'I had just come out of graduate school at the end of 2006. And 2007 was a very challenging year for me.' She believed graduate school would lead to a new beginning and desired to 'have a new identity and go get a job like a normal person.' She said the realization that wasn't going to happen 'was a pretty devastating moment." In 2014, Lewinsky wrote a personal essay for Vanity Fair and became one of its contributors. She went on to produce a documentary and give a TedTalk called 'The Price of Shame,' addressing cyber-bullying and public-shaming. Educating others provided Lewinsky with a purpose she had been looking for. 'With most everything I do, it feels really important to me that it moves a conversation forward somehow," said Lewinsky. She now hosts a podcast called 'Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.' By the time they officially began working on 'Twisted Tale,' Lewinsky was in protective mode. The 52-year-old Lewinsky, 14 years older than Knox, wanted to shield her from painful moments. She recalled being particularly worried that Knox would be traumatized by reading the first script. 'It's someone else's interpretation. There's dramatic license,' explained Lewinsky, who said she can still 'have sensitivities' to reading something written about her. Instead, Knox was OK and Lewinsky learned they're 'triggered by different things.' She laughs about it now: 'Amanda's a lot more agreeable than me.' The interrogation was key Knox said a part of her story that she wanted to make sure the TV series got right was the interrogation scene. She still describes it as 'the worst experience of my life and a really defining moment in how this whole case went off the rails. 'I was interrogated for 53 hours over five days. We don't see that on screen," she said. Now an advocate for criminal justice reform, Knox hopes viewers are moved by the condensed version and recognize 'the emotional truth and the psychological truth of that scenario.' Knox said she was coerced into signing a confession that she did not understand because of the language barrier. She was not fluent in Italian and did not have a lawyer with her at the time. In that document, Knox wrongly accused a local bar owner of the murder, and she still has a slander conviction because of it. Knox's lawyers recently filed paperwork to appeal that decision. She believes interrogations should have more transparency 'because what happens behind closed doors results in coerced confessions from innocent people to this day. I really wanted to shed a light on that.' No villains in Knox's version Knox has returned to Italy three times since her release from prison. One of those times was to meet with the prosecutor of her case after years of correspondence. Showrunner-creator KJ Stenberg said she had to condense more than 400 pages of their writing back-and-forth for their reunion scene. That meeting ultimately became the framework for the series. 'The scope of this story isn't, 'Here's the bad thing that happened to Amanda, the end.' The scope of the story is Amanda's going back to Italy and to appreciate why she made that choice, we need to go back and revisit everything that leads up to it," said Knox. Viewers will also see others' perspectives, including Sollecito's, a prison chaplain and confidante, and Knox's mother. It also shows how the investigators and prosecutor reached the conclusion at the time that Knox and Sollecito were guilty. 'We did not want mustache-twirling villains," said Knox. "We wanted the audience to come away from the story thinking, 'I can relate to every single person in this perfect storm.' That, to me, was so, so important because I did not want to do the harm that had been done to me in the past.' 'It's showing all of these people who are going through the same situation and all truly believing they were doing the right thing," added Van Patten. Knox isn't presented as perfect either in the series. 'I wasn't interested in doing a hagiography of Amanda Knox, nor was Amanda,' said Steinberg. Knox's harsh return to life after prison Knox had a hard time adjusting to so-called 'real life' after she was acquitted and returned home to the United States. This is shown in 'Twisted Tale.' 'I couldn't interact like a normal person with other people," said Knox. 'I went back to school and there were students who were taking pictures of me in class and posting them to social media with really unkind commentary.' She said the stigma has become "a huge, like, life-defining problem for me to solve.' 'People don't think about the adjustments she had to go through to reinsert herself into normal life, which is still not normal,' said Van Patten. Knox said she's learned that there are positives and negatives to her unique situation. 'There are exoneree friends of mine who have been able to move on with a life and be around people who don't know about the worst experience of their life. That's kind of a blessing and a curse. You don't have to explain yourself all the time but it's a curse because then this thing that was so defining of who you are as a person is something that you maybe feel like you don't know if you should share." "In my case, I never had that choice." Knox is now a married mother of two and grateful that her life did not turn out the way that she feared it would while in prison, particularly that she would never have children. "I was 22 years old when I was given a 26-year prison sentence. I could do the math,' she said. 'So every single day when I am with my children, I am reminded that this might not have happened. I don't care if I'm exhausted and I'm overwhelmed, this is what life is all about.'
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The Independent
3 minutes ago
- The Independent
What next for social media ‘martyr' Lucy Connolly after leaving prison?
Lucy Connolly is out of jail. She was one of about 1,800 arrested for offences during riots last summer in the wake of the Southport murders. Connolly, from Northampton, was convicted and jailed for publishing 'threatening or abusive' material on social media including an incitement to 'set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care.' Hers is one of the more high-profile cases and some activists have taken up her cause, claiming she has been a victim of 'two tier' policing, harsh sentencing, and restricted free speech. Her sentence was 31 months; a bid to reduce it was rejected by the Court of Appeal in May. Under current early release rules, she is allowed out on licence for the remainder of her sentence, having served 40 per cent. What did Connolly do wrong? Her supporters mostly concede that what she said was wrong, but many also minimise it as mere 'hurty words' for which nobody should be given a custodial sentence. There is also the suspicion in some quarters that the punishment was heavier because of political pressure; the prime minister said at the time that the full force of the law should be brought down on offenders. But her case was carefully examined at Birmingham Crown Court and at the Court of Appeal. The facts were not in dispute, she pled guilty, and the judges have considered the context and acted within the guidelines approved by ministers. What did she post on social media? The mother-of-three, who was working as a childminder at the time and is the wife of a Tory councillor, wrote a number of messages but attention focused on this X post that was later deleted: ''Mass deportation now. Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care. While you're at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.' While visible, it had been viewed 310,000 times and reposted 940 times. Four days earlier, Connolly had responded to a video shared online by Tommy Robinson, showing a black male being tackled to the ground for allegedly masturbating in public. 'Somalian, I guess. Loads of them,' she wrote, adding a vomiting emoji. Five days after the Southport murders Connolly stated on social media, referencing an anti-racism demo: 'Oh good. I take it they will all be in line to sign up to house an illegal boat invader then. Oh sorry, refugee. Maybe sign a waiver to say they don't mind if it's one of their family that gets attacked, butchered, raped etc, by unvetted criminals. Not all heroes wear capes.' Another message, on WhatsApp, read: 'The raging tweet about burning down hotels has bit me on the arse lol.' Another message, sent later, was in response to the furore she'd caused. According to the Court of Appeal, in another message she said she intended to tell authorities she had been the victim of doxing and went on to say that if she got arrested she would 'play the mental health card'. Did she have a defence? According to the Court of Appeal: 'The stabbings of the children in Southport had put her into a rage. She said she felt hatred about the incident and the circumstances, not about race. She said she had taken the post down because she realised it was wrong. Later in the interview she said her tweets were not racial and she had no intention to cause hate or racial issues.' Is she a hero? To some, she is akin to Emmeline Pankhurst or Joan of Arc. Senior members of the Trump administration have raised questions about freedom of speech in the UK as a result of the treatment of those who sent messages and were subsequently convicted of public order offences. Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, has lauded her in these terms: 'Welcome to freedom, Lucy Connolly. You are now a symbol of Keir Starmer's authoritarian, broken, two-tier Britain.' Kemi Badenoch has attacked the way the courts treated Connolly, going in hard on the two-tier charge: 'Lucy Connolly finally returns home to her family today. At last. Her punishment was harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting… meanwhile, former Labour councillor Ricky Jones called for protestors to have their throats slit. Charged with encouraging violent disorder, he pleaded not guilty and was acquitted by a jury who saw his words as a disgusting remark made in the heat of the moment, not a call to action.' Connolly will have no shortage of media outlets, some highly sympathetic, on which to appear should she wish. What does Keir Starmer think? He thinks politicians should stay out of the courtroom, and has no regrets. He told the Commons in May: 'Sentencing is a matter for our courts, and I celebrate the fact that we have independent courts in this country. I am strongly in favour of free speech … but I am equally against incitement to violence against other people.' What will happen next? Another extended skirmish in Britain's endless and debilitating culture wars. Maybe that chap who took a brick to his testes during the disturbances will be the next contender for martyrdom.
The Independent
3 minutes ago
- The Independent
George Lucas's $1 billion spaceship-like Los Angeles museum nears completion
It looks like a starship that's warped in from a galaxy far, far away. But it's actually a $1 billion passion project museum in Los Angeles, envisioned by Star Wars creator George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson. First announced in 2014, photos show not only that it's finally nearing completion, but that it's likely to become one of the city's most jaw-dropping attractions. The futuristic Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Exposition Park, due to open in 2026, has been designed to 'float' above the ground, according to Mad Architects, the studio behind the design. And there's not a right angle in sight. The 300,000-square-foot building sits in a landscape consisting of trees, gardens and walkways, and will house what's claimed to be 'one of the world's most significant collections of narrative art', curated by 81-year-old Lucas himself. The five-storey museum will house more than 10,000 pieces from his personal collection, including comics, illustrations, paintings, photographs, moving images, sculptures, and film memorabilia. On display will be works by illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, N. C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, and Kadir Nelson; comic artists such as Winsor McCay, Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby, and Robert Crumb; muralists such as Judith F. Baca and Diego Rivera; photographers including Dorothea Lange and Carrie Mae Weems; chroniclers of African American life including Jacob Lawrence and Charles White; and seminal works by artists including Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Robert Colescott. The collection also includes cinematic archives, including the Separate Cinema Archive and the entire Historic Lucasfilm Archive (1971–2012). The interior will comprise gallery spaces, 299-seat cinema theaters, glass elevators, a library, a cafe and restaurants, and visitors will be able to ascend to a rooftop terrace for panoramic city views. The museum said in a statement: "The design was conceptualized to reflect Los Angeles's vibrant pioneering spirit and embrace of its diverse inhabitants, representing a celebration of dialogue, understanding, and inclusivity. 'It stands as a testament to the city's vibrancy, history of innovation, and rich cultural tapestry. "For an institution dedicated to the art of visual storytelling, the design of the campus invites the visitor on a journey long before stepping into the museum's galleries."
