For ITV, any disposal of Friends Reunited is the exact antithesis of selling off the family silver.
When the acquisition was announced in 2006 for an eye-watering £175m there was a sharp intake of breath - after all, although Friends Reunited was in some way pioneering it was rapidly losing its novelty to US rivals that offered far better functionality and without a subscription. In fact the purchase seemed slightly desperate, which with the benefit of only a little hindsight it clearly was.
Michael Grade's predecessor Charles Allen had long struggled to emulate his mentor, former Granada chief executive Gerry Robinson, who had impressed the City with a number of audacious bids. If Allen was hoping that Friends Reunited would be his response to Robinson's hostile takeover of Forte then he was sadly deluded.
Unfortunately it has fallen to his successors to pick through the debris and Friends Reunited is the biggest obstacle of all. Quite whether ITV can find a buyer in this fire sale and whether more redundancies and a slashing of programme budgets are enough to secure its medium to long-term financial future is the question.
If it isn't, given how quickly the Government has been in bailing out the banking sector, would it be too much to expect some help for the only UK-owned commercially funded broadcaster?
