ITV revenue jumps as production offsets flat advertising - Telegraph.co.uk

However, there was little improvement in the advertising market, which has been seriously battered by the economic downturn and increased competition from online services. They are expected to fall by around 2pc in the fourth quarter, putting the broadcaster on track for broadly flat advertising revenues for the full year.

"The economic outlook remains uncertain and we continue to see monthly volatility in the UK television advertising market, but the underlying trends have not changed," Mr Crozier said.

ITV also had a difficult summer because of the London Olympics and Paralympics, which attracted record numbers of viewers to the BBC and Channel 4 where they aired, but let ITV with relatively slim pickings.

"This has been an extraordinary year for UK television with many unique events including the Queen's Jubilee, The London Olympics and the Paralympics. In fact nine out of the top 10 programmes aired [on any channel] will not return next year and as we expected this has affected our viewing performance," Mr Crozier said. ITV does not expect its drop in ratings to impact the share of television advertising revenues it can win next year, as would normally be expected.

The broadcaster focused on stripping out costs instead, and said it is likely to deliver £30m of savings this year - £10m more than its original target.

The results was welcomed by analysts. Paul Richards at Numis said ITV had outperformed the advertising market, "despite early scare stories of a soft fourth quarter" whilst its Studios business "clearly has strong momentum", putting the broadcaster in a position to begin share buybacks next year.

"We see scope for the group to announce a rolling buyback of perhaps 10pc of share capital at its finals in March," he said.

Ian Whittaker at Liberum said that ITV's cost cutting will "be taken well" by investors, and appeared to be driven by "a number of smaller efficiencies" rather than any one big item.

He added that ITV's guidance on advertising revenues appeared to be rather conservative given a noticeable increase in spending by supermarkets in recent weeks.