Media: Perspective - GMTV should keep independence for advertisers' sake.

Real men don't watch GMTV. If they're anything like me, they watch golf and football on Sky, The Sopranos on E4 and post-football action films on ITV.

But then I always go and fail the real man test. I actually like salad and quiche (not as much as steak and chips but it doesn't make me sick) and I watch Coronation Street, a show invented for women by a gay man, with an audience broadly similar to GMTV's, only much larger.

So for a half-man, half-vegetarian like myself, GMTV has its uses. Like when Johnny Briggs, the veteran actor who plays Mike Baldwin on the Street, goes on it to explain why he's leaving the soap.

ITV must also think that it has its uses, because last week its bid to buy Scottish Media Group's 25 per cent stake in GMTV was cleared, giving it a controlling interest of up to 75 per cent in the morning broadcaster.

The Office of Fair Trading saw no reason to call for a Competition Commission investigation into the deal, batting away concerns from the IPA and others that it would increase ITV's ability to operate a conditional sell and lead to price hikes for advertisers wanting to reach GMTV's audience of women and children.

GMTV's 2 per cent share of TV net ad revenue is small, and the OFT believes advertisers could easily substitute other channels in the event of price increases.

However, this ignores the fact that GMTV pitches itself to household and children's ...