ITV has just spun out a new deal with its news supplier, ITN. In case you don’t understand the oddness of British TV news – ITV doesn’t have its own news division, it contracts the news out – and has done for fifty years – to a company it 40% owns.

According to the headline it’s £250m till 2012. So will the champagne corks be popping at ITV’s and ITN’s HQ on Grays Inn Road? Maybe upstairs at network centre, but probably not on the newsroom floor. TV advertising revenues may be falling across the board, but not as fast as the price paid for broadcast news.

Here’s why. First strip out the £15m cap ex for studio and equipment refurbs. That gives you £235m to play with. Take inflation at 3% and I’d say you’re looking at an annual deal in the region of £36.5m.

Now consider that the agreement covers not just ITV News programmes but the provision of local London news once undertaken by LNN. I’d reckon that’s worth about £6m – although you could squeeze it down.

So you have a national and international news service running for just over £30m a year. When you look at ITN’s Channel 4 News contract – which sits on the healthy side of £20m you can see just how little money this is.

Although the price of the ITV News contract suffered its biggest falls during the 1990s (threatened by competition from Sky), by 1997 it was bringing in the equivalent today of £60m. So over ten years the value of that contract has halved. In real terms it’s two and a half times the amount Channel Five paid ITN for their original news service.

Now technology moves on, and savings can be saved and costs trimmed. But ITN is a lean, mean news machine. On recent judgement it has probably the most exciting leadership in TV news.

Still £100k a day to bring you the global, national and regional news is the steal of the century. If anyone at White City wants to know how they do it, perhaps ITN Consulting might help out?