Later that year, Granada acquired London Weekend Television[4] through a hostile takeover worth in the region of £750 million.

[5] By the end of the 1990s, there were three dominating owners of the ITV franchises in England and Wales: Carlton Communications, Granada plc and United News and Media.

[9] One of the consequences of the merger was (according to the company) an over-capacity of studio facilities and production units around the country, which had previously been rivals, but were now all part of the same group.

In order to make cost savings, several large regional headquarters, studio sites and programme departments closed and merged.

In all cases, ITV moved the regional franchisee to a new location complete with hi-tech facilities for news production, but with a minimal number of (physically smaller) studios and the loss of many jobs.

Tyne Tees' factual department merged with Yorkshire's in Leeds (which has since closed and re-emerged as Shiver Productions);[10] Meridian's factual and sport production moved to London; all network production in Nottingham was re-allocated to London, Manchester or Leeds (and the local Central News studio moved to Birmingham), and Anglia Factual, reduced to a satellite operation of ITV Studios and primarily producing output for the international market or occasionally third parties in the UK, was eventually closed in January 2012.

[14] On 27 April 2005, ITV plc bought SDN, the digital terrestrial franchise holder of Multiplex A (now transmitting ten channels) from its shareholders, S4C and UBM for £134 million.

[16] In August 2006, the company sold its 45% shareholding in TV3 Ireland, which had been bought by Granada in 2001, to Doughty Hanson & Co.[17] There were rumours of take-over and merger bids during 2006.

[18][19] The merger was effectively blocked by British Sky Broadcasting on 17 November 2006 when it bought a 17.9% stake in ITV plc for £940 million,[20] a move that attracted anger from NTL shareholder Richard Branson[21] and an investigation from media and telecoms regulator Ofcom.

NTL stated that it had withdrawn its attempt to buy ITV plc, citing that it did not believe that there was any possibility to make a deal on favourable terms.

[24] In the end, no movement was made on this possible deal and RTL sold Channel 5 to Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell Network in July 2010.

[28] In December 2013 the company sold its remaining shareholding in STV Group plc (owner of the Scottish and Grampian ITV licences) which had been bought by Carlton in 1999.

[32] In August 2016, it was revealed that ITV had made an offer to acquire Canadian multinational film and television distributor Entertainment One for around £1 billion.

[34][35] In 2022, the company announced the arrival of ITVX, which it said would be Britain's first integrated advertising and subscription funded streaming platform, and would complement its catch-up service, ITV Hub, and would include access to BritBox.

[38] On 28 February 2024, ITV plc revealed a corporate brand refresh, reinforcing its three strategic pillars of expanding Studios, supercharging streaming and optimising broadcast.