[WillPS]

I presume the reason Granada had to dispose of HTV was for competition reasons, to stop one company having a dominance over the Channel 3 network. So why were Granada and Carlton subsequently allowed to merge, meaning one company had almost total domination? Did the Competition Commission just roll over and say, ‘Oh, go on then’? My memory of the time is getting a bit hazy now.

It wasn't too much of the Channel 3 licensee market, it was too much of the overall commercial television market. The % share of a Channel 3 license fell dramatically between when they were awarded and digital switch over, because year to year each consumer spent an average of less time looking at Channel 3 vs the growing number of other options they typically had available to them.

When the first Channel 3 license takeovers occurred there was contemporary commentary which suggested that the Monopolies and Mergers commission wouldn't have allowed, say, Yorkshire (with Tyne Tees), Carlton (with Central) or Meridian (with Anglia) to grow any bigger at that point - and that reflected the dominant audience share the ITV network still had. That's part of the reason relative minnows like Border, Grampian, Westcountry and of course Channel survived as independents - the 'major powers' were not interested in them in that initial phase because the game was to get as big as you could without 'overeating', and such a merger would potentially have scuppered their ability to get a bigger catch elsewhere.

Obviously by the end of the 90s that was provably no longer the case, but Granada finally found the line with their takeover of UNM and the consequence was they had to divest the excess from their new asset.