John de Mol

A new prospective bidder has emerged in the sale of RTL’s Channel Five, as Dawn Airey, Five’s chief executive, meets with more than a dozen different potential buyers.

The Dutch media entrepreneur John de Mol - of Cyrte Investments and Talpa Media, as well as founder of Endemol and creator of the Big Brother and Deal or No Deal formats - is working with Antenna Group of Greece in an attempt to acquire Channel Five.

Cyrte Investments owns around a third of Endemol, the Dutch Big Brother producer co-founded by De Mol in the 1990s. De Mol created the Big Brother format (coming to an end of their 10-year run in the UK) when he ran Endemol and there is speculation that several long-running reality TV series, including Big Brother, could appear on Five should his bid with Antenna succeed, according to a report in on the FT.com website on Wednesday.

The Antenna chief executive, Theo Kyriakou, is understood to be in London this week for talks with JP Morgan, who are running the sale. The leading financial services firm are expected to narrow down bidders over the next three weeks before selecting two prospective buyers who will then be given access to Five’s latest trading figures.

Dawn Airey

It’s difficult to put a figure on the company as Five has been making a loss (there was a £10m recorded operating loss in 2009), however its value lies with its content and format shows, as well as its ability to run paid advertisements. It is believed from bankers and analysts that TRL want around €200m for Five.

In 2005, Forbes magazine named De Mol as one of the 500 richest people in the world. The pan-European broadcaster is 90 per cent owned by Bertelsmann of Germany.

When George Osbourne announced the budget on Wednesday, it was no great surprise that the term “pay freeze” was mentioned here and there. The two-year pay freeze for workers in the public sector mean that the broadcasters are going to find themselves under even greater scrutiny than they previously have been.

With the expenses fiasco at the BBC quietening, they now stroll into summer and Glastonbury, where in 2009 they were criticised for sending over 400 members of staff to the Somerset festival, almost as many as they flew out to film the 2008 Beijing Olympics. There were so many on the corporation’s payroll that it had to block book hotels within a 10-mile radius of the festival. The BBC sent just 32 more to cover the Olympics.

The Glastonbury festival - which has grown with the BBC into a glorious multi-platform thing - has small teams roaming the farm to report on all manner of cultural activities. The output dipping in-and-out of footie and tennis bouts across BBC Two, Three and Four, plus the red button and online.

Then there’s the recent ‘firm stance’ against their staff and the Christine Bleakley saga which has created numerous side stories in the press, “Should she stay or should she go…?” In the end it was decided that enough was enough and that the BBC would not continue their negotiations and so she’s off to…ITV of course! To rejoin her One Show laughter-buddy, Adrian Chiles, and recreate their paragon of sofa chemistry. And it only cost ITV and Peter Fincham (BBC1’s former controller) a mere £4 million. That’s roughly one-quarter of Frank Lampard.

One executive at ITV said, “”There was almost zero consultation with most staff. Even in meetings up to a week ago managers just told us Christine was the ‘elephant in the room’ and they wouldn’t be saying any more.”

Channel 4’s chief executive, David Abraham, is also creating a state of metamorphosis over at Horseferry Road with a 25% cut in senior management. The cull will cut a quarter of senior managers and calls for a “fundamental evolution” at the group. The new shape of C4 will see online commissioning and production combined with its TV equivalent to form a single division.

One industry expert said: “C4 needs to survive the downturn, and in the absence of a deal or the ability to buy its way out, it needs to focus on reorganisation and cutting costs.”

At least the broadcasters are moving with the times and echoing the chorus of the new sprity coalition government, but with industry jobs thin on the ground anyway, these recent cuts cause new and foreboding clouds that waver uncertainty over this already fragile industry.