Indeed, the ITV combine has looked like an acquisition waiting to happen ever since it was formed from the merger of Granada and Carlton.ITV is little more than Coronation Street with a good deal of poor-quality padding around it. As it happens, the Street isn't as good as it used to be, but however successful it is, it can't carry a whole channel single-handedly. ITV's poor World Cup - in terms of advertising revenues, that is - confirms to me that this business just isn't as healthy as it ought to be. It isn't in any kind of shape to cope with the challenge of multi-channel digital platforms or the attractions of the web.So I'm going to buy shares in it.

As a takeover target it has rarely been more vulnerable, with bad media coverage and a share price now languishing at close to an all-time low. The brokers' consensus forecast for yield is about 3.5 per cent, which is quite acceptable.Everyone from Greg Dyke to Apac Partners has been mentioned as being interested in buying ITV, and I do think it's only a matter of time before it goes under Rumours about the management haven't helped matters. Some babe appears on the screen asking you what two plus two equals or how to spell "the" or something. Then you're invited to phone in at some cost and win a temptingly large prize. Your phone bill will go up and the chances of winning the prize may be less than you'd assume, despite the ease of the question. In the digital world, there seem to be more and more channels and less and less choice Nowhere is this more true than in ITV's offerings. They're up to three or four digital channels now, but switch any of them on after about midnight and you're deluged with a new modern plague: the premium phone-line quiz show.How I think it works is this.

Well, I've got a modernised and personalised version of that old saying. Mine is that television is for owning shares in, rather than watching. Of course, by far the most important force in British television is off limits, at least for the time being One day we will be able to buy shares in the BBC Until then, however, things are more limited. This is why I've had a close look at ITV. Now, I've always been a bit of a telly addict, but nowadays I find less and less worth watching. Sitting in front of the gogglebox was, in the phrase of the time, rather "non-U" A bit common, in other words.

But, say, 30p or even 35p looks possible in the not too distant future. Next year, with profits expected to emerge at about £2.2m, I anticipate a maiden dividend.IDN and Lighthouse return the portfolio to 15 constituents - about right My additions replace DataCash and MacLellan I hope they are as rewarding as the ousted twosome.. It used to be the case, with posh people, that television was for appearing on rather than actually watching. In a recent investment note, Sonia Kaur of the researcher Hardman & Co described it as "the strongest low-risk player in the sector".I doubt if the shares will return in my lifetime to the heady 160p level. There have been some sad experiences with people companies in the past. But I have overcome my reservations, as individuals' contracts are now much tighter than they used to be.Lighthouse is clearly making progress.