COO John Cresswell, named interim CEO on Tuesday, has scrapped the sale of its DTT multiplex SDN and is looking instead to transfer its ownership to ITV's pension fund as an asset that will plug a growing hole there. ITV paid £134m (E143m) for SDN to a consortium including S4C, United News & Media and ntl. It will transfer at as high a value as it can get (but doubtless less than the buy price) and will meantime benefit from the positive cashflow; it says full year revenue for SDN will be about £40m.

To replace the sale in ITV's debt reduction programme, the company will issue £120m of bonds. In a trading update ITV said ad revenue was down on the month 3% against a year ago but this was good news against the 12% drop in August and 7% in September.

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