[Orry Verducci]

What "transmission costs" does ITVX have? I don't think they even have one of those placeholder broadcast channels (ala Pop Player) do they?

You probably mean bandwidth costs, which isn't at all the same thing and (unlike transmission costs) can be scaled according to demand (=revenue). ITV X also has an ability to capture revenue directly from the user, which of course broadcast does not.

Alongside the packaging and CDN (bandwidth) costs it's worth mentioning there are other costs involved that don't scale.

There's encoding costs for the streams, both for the VOD assets (charged once per encode) and the live streams (charged per minute), which are charged regardless of viewers. For the VOD assets there are of course storage costs. For live services, be it the traditional linear services or the FAST services, there are also playout costs involved.

Not to mention the costs of running and developing the platform and the staff that go with it.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is something more to the closure of the CITV channel. Whether that be to sell/hand back the freeview/satellite space? I also wouldn't be surprised if this is a slow process to scale back linear tv services. Traditional tv viewing is falling fast now and the costs will soon exceed the income directly from more of their channels.

Carriage costs will of course been a factor, as that's capacity they won't have to pay for going forwards. With respect to Freeview, CITV was carried on the SDN mux, which ITV own, so that's capacity that SDN/ITV can now sell to someone else and earn from.

As I mentioned a few posts back ITV and Red Bee are in the process of planning a playout upgrade and move, so the closure of CITV will also help there as that's one less channel they will need to install infrastucture for.