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Gill Hind, director of TV at Enders Analysis, says: “Quite clearly, ITV as a company is undervalued and ITV Studios is undervalued compared to its peers ... It’s a very strong production studio, not just in the UK but globally.”

But analysts question the benefits of cross-border broadcasting mergers and the ease of hiving off ITV’s production business, given it sells many of its shows to the channel.

Hind describes the prospect of a takeover as “interesting”, but adds: “I’m still slightly sceptical about whether it will go ahead.”

Last week, ITV enjoyed a rare boost on the stock market as rumours swirled that bidders were circling. But for City viewers, this is a repeat episode. Analysts have for decadesidentified ITV as an undervalued asset ripe for the plucking. Yet no such deal has materialised. “It is the longest-running saga,” said Claire Enders, the boss of media advisory firm Enders Analysis. “It has been spoken of for beyond 20 years.”

Enders said: “She has a lot of sympathy and understanding from everybody in this industry.” And Jonathan Shalit, the boss of talent manager InterTalent Rights Group, said: “She’s built the best commercial streaming platform in the UK. She’s crafted a real A-list of commissioners and programme makers at ITV. I think she’s an exceptional individual.”

“He has overseen the first UK commercial launches of 3G (at Three UK), 4G (at EE) and 5G (at BT/EE), surely a unique triple. Among his other achievements he managed that rare thing, a (rightly) widely-regarded-as-successful large scale telecoms merger/integration with BT and EE, a deftly handled exit from BT Sport, and has navigated seemingly endless regulatory pricing rule changes with ease,” said James Barford, Head of Telecoms at Enders Analysis in a LinkedIn post.

“The dominant tech player doesn’t get out competed,” says Joseph Teasdale of Enders Analysis. “They become redundant as new tech comes along.”

Francois Godard, senior media analyst at Enders, cautions that such mergers and acquisitions are not always straightforward. “We’ve seen it’s not so easy to build European coalitions that work,” he says, citing RTL’s sale of Channel 5 in 2010, or Mediaset which he says is “doing fine in Italy and Spain” but was “never able to build synergies.”