Media: All about ... TV sales houses.(Channel Four Television Company Ltd. negotiates with British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC. Sky Media)

Merger talk over TV ad sales houses is at fever pitch, Alasdair Reid writes.

'If I were a betting man,' one senior media agency source last week confessed, 'I wouldn't mind taking a punt on 'Millie' putting the band back together again.'

A week or two ago, we'd have smiled glassily and edged away, confident in the expectation that the men in white coats would soon arrive to take him away. Though not before persuading him that, actually, he was a betting man and taking him up on his mad wager.

But these days, a week is a very long time in the television industry Last Thursday, all the talk was of a possible merger between Channel 4's sales operation and Sky Media. But that expectation changed utterly the next day.

Almost everyone is agreed that some consolidation is inevitable in the airtime sales market, especially if Contract Rights Renewal (CRR - market restrictions imposed on ITV when it became one sales point in 2003) …