10:30am UK, Thursday May 15, 2008

ITV has insisted its turnaround plan is on course with it looking set to outperform the UK advertising market for the first time in eight years, despite the viewer votes scandals.

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Grade: 'Further progress'

Its net ad revenues were up by 2% in the first three months of this year.

It predicted the key measure would be flat for the company's first half - better than a 1% dip for the market as a whole.

ITV also said its viewing share across its family of channels, which includes its flagship ITV1, was up 1.6% at 23.4%.

Executive chairman Michael Grade, who joined the broadcaster at the end of 2006, said: "ITV has made further progress in 2008 and the turnaround plan, outlined in September 2007, remains on track.

"The forecast for the first half shows us outperforming the UK television advertising market - the first time this has happened since 2000."

ITV's total group revenues for the first quarter were up 3% to £492m.

Broadcasting revenues suffered a 2% dip to £409m for the period, largely due to suspended text and red button voting after the recent spate of phone-in scandals relating to programmes such as Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and Soapstar Superstar.

Last week ITV was fined a total of £5.67m by regulator Ofcom as a result of the broadcaster's "serious editorial issues" which saw huge numbers of viewer votes ignored by programmers.

The big driver in ITV's revenues growth was global content sales, up 41% to £58m during the quarter.

Deals include a US version of reality TV cooking show Hell's Kitchen starring Marco Pierre White, and Dancing On Ice which has

been sold on to countries like Australia, Belgium and Slovakia.

A Chinese version of Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway has also proved a success and now attracts some 55 million viewers.