[WillPS]

That all makes sense. But it seems surprising that from Granada buying UNM’s regions in 2000, and not being able to keep all of them, to one company only four years later, being allowed to own all regions in England and Wales. Did viewing of commercial TV fragment that much in so little time? Maybe it did.

There's a cliff edge with these sort of things I suppose - either the commission determines there is a need to keep one company from having an overwhelming majority of Channel 3 licenses, in which case they needed to ensure no one part became too big (as in 2000), or they don't, and a merger is allowed.

There's not really another compromise possible when you're down to 2 - I suppose they could have ruled that it'd be acceptable if one of the London franchises, GMTV as well as a couple of other licenses were divested, but what competition would that really have preserved? What market benefit would there have been other than some continued duplication of roles? Would there even have been a suitor (SMG is the only obvious candidate really)?

I dare say there was an element of acknowledging the direction of travel in terms of the overall market, which by that point had been in the process of being diluted for more than a decade, and allowing consideration of where the market would be in 5 years/post DSO. I'm sure a complete rationale from the commission at the time is online somewhere...