ITV Studios revenues dropped by 25% in 2020 due to COVID disruption, according to the ITV annual report.

The report revealed that total external revenue was down 16% at £2,781m. Total Broadcast revenues were down 8%, with total advertising down 11% despite VOD advertising up 17%

ITV Studios adjusted EBITA was down 43% to £152m, impacted by the decline in revenue and the costs associated with COVID-19 safety measures

Carolyn McCall, Chief Executive, said:“Throughout this last year, we have all been dealing with the effects of the pandemic. As the UK’s largest commercial network, we’ve worked hard to fulfil our responsibility as a source of reliable and trusted news and to deliver some of the best entertainment into the country’s homes.

“I’m proud of the work of all our colleagues and thank them for their dedication, creativity and hard work to successfully manage our way through the crisis while continuing to invest in our strategy. Our production teams were very innovative in restarting productions quickly and safely in the UK and internationally, while our commercial colleagues inspired advertisers to restart their marketing campaigns.

“Good progress has been made in delivering our strategic priorities with the rollout of our programmatic addressable advertising platform, Planet V, to agencies to a very positive response; the acceleration of the transformation of the ITV Hub; BritBox UK is ahead of plan hitting half a million subscriptions in January 2021; and BritBox US increased its subscriptions by 50% over the year – we now have over 2.6m subscriptions globally across all our SVOD services.

“While total revenues and profits were down our financial performance was ahead of expectations driven by a strong end to Q4 and our firm control over costs.

“We are encouraged by the roadmap out of lockdown. We are seeing more positive trends in the advertising market in March and April and the majority of our programmes are now back in production. However, there remains uncertainty in all markets around the world with the potential risk of lockdowns, which if they materialise will affect revenues. We are committed to taking further cost out of the business while further investing to accelerate the delivery of our strategy and digital transformation. We have restructured the Broadcast business to create the Media and Entertainment Division to better respond to changing viewing habits. ITV Studios is well positioned to take advantage of the continued strong growth in the demand for quality content internationally.”

Jon Creamer

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