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Mr Allen warned that Granada and or Carlton might fall prey to foreign takeovers if they are not allowed to merge Sir Robin was similarly apocalyptic. Collapsing advertising revenues mean the commercial sector is finding it impossible to compete with the BBC, with its guaranteed licence fee income. The strong advertising revenues once assumed for ITV have gone, Sir Robin says, and it is essential ITV is allowed to adapt to survive.The figures lend some support to his case. According to the last accounts, BBC One costs £922m a year to produce, which is entirely funded by an inflation-proofed licence fee. ITV is about the same, once account is taken of regional programming, but its revenues are plummeting, a situation made that much worse by Granada and Carlton’s hugely costly investment in ITV Digital and ITV Sport. Plainly something has to give.It is not clear, however, that the something envisaged should come at the cost of creating a single company with a commanding, monopolistic share of all TV advertising in Britain.

ITV seems to have been trying its damnedest to lose advertisers to the competition in recent years, but it still has well over 50 per cent of all TV advertising, and advertisers continue to regard it as the most effective way of reaching a mass audience. In any case, the chief problem with ITV is not the legislation, which bars the creation of such a monstrosity, but ITV itself and its hopelessly unimaginative management. Commercial television in Britain has not really moved on since it was famously described as “a licence to print money”. It’s understandable enough that the BBC should regard itself as an adjunct of public policy, but that ITV should take the same view, that it should spend as much of its time attempting to manage the politicians and the regulators as its own business, is a real curiosity.Sir Robin is right on one thing The world has indeed changed. Unfortunately, ITV has failed to change with it, and in business that generally means only one thing. No wonder ITV is going down the pan.Rough portfolioDavid Rough, chief investment officer of Legal & General and one of the architects of the group’s elevation into the ranks of the UK’s top five fund managers, is moving on from portfolio management to portfolio life.

At the age of 50, he’s had enough, and he’s aiming to swap his full-time job at L&G for a range of part-time jobs in the City and industry. David “Portfolio Man” Rough is how he wants to be known, and as a much respected figure in the City, he stands a better chance than most of achieving it.There’s nothing untoward about his going, which is entirely voluntary and amicable. But there’s always something symbolic that can be read into a high-profile departure, and in Mr Rough’s case it should perhaps be seen in the context of the present debate over indexation. Throughout the 1990s, L&G rode the trend towards low-cost indexation of investment funds, and Mr Rough was very much a part of that fashion. With the bear market of the past 18 months, the assumed advantages of index tracking are being challenged once more.In a bear market, active fund managers and hedge fund operatives come more and more into their own, and if we really are in for a prolonged period of low or even negative equity returns, then the big indexed funds might in time look like pretty poor value for money. All of which brings us on to the delicate issue of whether past performance as a fund manager is any guide to the future.The Financial Services Authority has stirred the controversy afresh by refusing to publish performance assessments with its online guide to the cost and risk of ISA and unit trust products. The big active fund managers are up in arms, since on any such comparison, they are bound to look expensive.