ITV forecasts advertising growth

BROADCASTER ITV bucked the downbeat trend in its sector today by predicting that advertising revenues would rise by 3% in the first six months of 2005.

Although this represented a fall from the 4.7% growth seen for the whole of last year, the group's shares lifted 4% as investors expressed relief that the slowdown was not more serious.

Many media groups have suffered badly from the downturn in advertising spending in recent months.In addition to its main ITV terrestrial channel, the group also owns 75% of the GMTV breakfast channel and has a trio of digital channels in ITV2, ITV3 and the ITV News Channel.

The growth drivers were expected to be ITV News and GMTV. Advertising revenues for the other three channels were expected to be broadly the same as last year.

The company also confirmed rumours that its new ITV4 channel will be targeted at male viewers, although it did not give further information on what kind of programmes it would feature.

Chief executive Charles Allen told the group's annual meeting: 'We will launch another new channel, ITV4, later in the year aimed at a male demographic.' This followed the 'exceptional' performance of its other new digital channels ITV2 and ITV3.

Earlier this year, the company revealed that pre-tax profits had increased by 57% to £340m in its first year as a merged company.

The shares lifted 3.75p to 119p today.