The perma-tanned fan who ended ITV's digital dream

LAUNCHED in a blaze of glory by glamorous presenter Ulrika Jonsson, ITV Digital promised an armchair revolution. No longer would viewers have to put up with ugly satellite dishes. No longer would their front lawns have to be dug up by cable companies to receive multi-channel television.

All they would need was their existing aerials and a simple plug-in box on top of the TV.

But now the ITV Digital dream is over, and at the centre of its downfall is Keith Harris. He may be one of football's most experienced deal-makers, but Harris's bluff was called spectacularly when ITV Digital was put into administration last week.

A devotee of the Beautiful Game with 25 years' experience in the City, the perma-tanned Football League chairman seemed ideally suited to lock horns with ITV Digital's bosses when they refused to pay the £180m still owed to Nationwide League clubs under a three-year contract.

But instead of taking the £50m that ITV Digital had put on the table, Harris raised the stakes by threatening a £500m lawsuit against its parent companies, Granada and Carlton.

Now he risks getting nothing. When the board of ITV Digital met last Wednesday, the mood inside the City offices of the company's accountants, Deloitte & Touche, was grim. It was clear that the digital TV operator had no chance of honouring the £315m contract it had signed two years ago with the Football League to televise live matches. But the League wanted its money and was cutting up rough. Something had to give.

Ironically, it was at 3pm - Saturday-kick-off time - that the board made its final play, applying to the High Court to put ITV Digital in administration. And 90 minutes later it was all over: the order was granted. Deloitte & Touche suddenly had a new role - as ITV Digital's administrators. From now on, the accountants would be in charge.

The full board was present, including Michael Green and Charles Allen, chairmen of Carlton and Granada, and the station's chief executive, Stuart Prebble. The dramatic events had been triggered when 11th-hour talks between ITV Digital and the League collapsed.

Earlier that day, ITV Digital had heard from Harris. The channel had offered the League £50m instead of the £180m it originally promised, but Harris had refused. Yes, he was willing to compromise he told them. But only up to a point. The League would accept nothing less than the £89m payment due in August. 'I told Prebble this on Tuesday and all he said was that he would put it to his shareholders. He sounded as if he was just reading from a script,' Harris recalls.

ITV Digital refused Harris's offer of a compromise. He now says he does not believe the TV companies ever seriously expected him to accept their offer. Instead, he believes they were manoeuvring to ditch their expensive football contract, shut their pay-television channel, ITV Sport, and emerge from administration or even liquidation still in control of a slimmeddown ITV Digital. It is entirely possible that Granada and Carlton could pick up their former offspring cheap once it has been liquidated.

Harris now intends not only to sue the TV companies, but also Allen and Green personally.

The TV companies take a different view. An executive said that putting the firm into administration would bring home to ITV Digital's suppliers that it means business. 'People were not taking the process of restructuring seriously,' he said. 'Now they know this is not a bluff. They also get the chance to see the details of the plans for ITV Digital, which is for a low-cost, mid-market service fitting between Sky and a free digital proposition.'

Harris is not the only supplier in a contract dispute with ITV Digital. Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB receives £65m a year from the League for supplying its channels to ITV Digital subscribers. ITV Digital cannot afford that contract either and is much more bitter about BSkyB's role in its demise than it is about the League's supposed intransigence.

The ITV executive added: 'Sky is making reasonable noises now, but that's because it is terrified that the whole weight of the regulators will be thrown on it if we go under. Sky would love for ITV Digital to limp along. Sky has deliberately blocked ITV Sport from going on satellite. They've a lot to answer for and the Government knows it.'

Harris, meanwhile, has not entirely turned his back on doing a deal with the company, but it is clear that if trust ever existed between the two sides, it has long since vanished. 'I would still accept payment from them,' he said this weekend from his holiday hideout in the Caribbean. 'But it would have to be via a banker's draft - I wouldn't trust a cheque. What they have done is completely unethical.'