According to reports yesterday in the UK’s Financial Times, Richard Desmond, owner of Channel 5, is reported to be seriously considering the sale of the broadcaster.


The paper says that Desmond has brought in advisers to work on a possible offload of the broadcaster with a view to raising more than £700m for his multimedia business, Northern & Shell, though it is thought that a more realistic valuation is closer to £400m.


Desmond — a rather colourful and controversial figure in the UK, partly due to his company’s large stable of adult content — acquired the broadcaster from the RTL Group in 2010 for £103.5m after an extensive write down of its value. Given some of the recent optimistic forecasts about TV advertising revenue, prospects for the sale look quite good, especially given that Channel 5 provides a route to market via a free to air broadcaster and those are in short supply in Europe nowadays.
However, balanced against that is the fact that Desmond has a track record of this sort of thing: going through the process of valuing his newspaper business — which includes the often hysterical tabloid Daily Express — several years ago and then deciding to keep hold of it anyway.


Under Desmond’s ownership, Channel 5 has returned to profit in the past four years though it has also struggled to improve on audience figures that continually track around the 4% mark. This is despite investment in some major brands such as Celebrity Big Brother (pictured) which coincidentally (or not) starts today.
- NAB 2014 – the View From the UK - April 1, 2014
- UK’s Channel 4 Changes YouTube Profile - January 10, 2014
- UK’s Channel 5 Up For Sale? - January 3, 2014
