[Stuart]

The other would be for STV to really mess up and it becomes devalued. The obvious example here is UTV as a whole suffering heavy losses back in 2015 due to UTV Ireland.

Until either of those happen, I think we’ll pretty much see the status quo for many years to come.

UTV were intending to buy/merge with STV at one point, but then as you say 'messed up' with UTV Ireland so got bought out themselves by ITV who immediately asset stripped the parts losing money.

STV have divested themselves of almost everything except their TV assets, and also 'messed up' with the concept of Local TV/STV2. I presume that cost them a pretty penny.

ITV is already branded across much of STV's programming from GMB/Lorraine to the News programmes, together with endboards for most networked shows.

I think ITV can afford to just sit and wait for the phone call from STV (or a knock on the door if they've had their phones cut off for non-payment).