The proposed £1.6bn takeover of a big chunk of ITV by Sky would be the biggest consolidation in British broadcasting in more than 20 years, and reflects fundamental changes in viewing habits and commercial realities.

For Sky, a deal that brings together Ant and Dec with Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher would make it the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster, and strengthen its hand in the battle with US streaming giants that have upended the entertainment business.

For ITV’s shareholders, who have seen the value of their investment decline as advertising revenue, like viewers, has migrated online, it may be a chance to say, “I own a terrestrial broadcaster, get me out of here.”

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Neither Sky or ITV would publicly discuss who made the initial offer, and both stress that talks are at an early stage, but privately, both sides emphasise the mutual opportunity.

For Sky, owned by US giant Comcast since 2018, there is the opportunity to create a larger pool of content and subscribers.

The deal would see it acquire ITV’s media and entertainment business, including its free-to-air channels and public sector broadcaster (PSB) licence, which runs to 2034, as well as the ITVX streaming platform, which has 40 million registered users.

The ITV brand is likely to be retained, and the two companies run separately, but Sky would look to leverage its commercial and technology strengths.

ITV’s PSB licence includes the requirement that ITV’s app be “available, prominent and easily accessible” on online platforms, a crucial shop window as viewers access content directly.

Added to Sky’s existing 13 million subscribers for largely pay-walled content in the UK, it would add muscle as the broadcaster competes for attention, subscription revenue and advertiser spend.

The acquisition would be a restatement of commitment to Sky from Comcast. Having paid £31bn for Sky in a bidding war with Disney seven years ago, it wrote down that investment by more than £6bn in 2022, and earlier this year announced the sale of Sky Deutschland.

While it is navigating the conclusion of exclusivity deals with content providers, including with HBO that gave it rights to hits including Succession, the £5bn renewal of Premier League rights this season underlined the centrality of sport to Sky’s offer.

Scale matters because even companies as prominent in the UK as Sky and ITV are competing with giants, both for audiences and advertisers.

Netflix has 301 million subscribers worldwide and annual revenues approaching $40bn. Amazon, the largest retailer in the world, is now an entertainment content provider. In the US, Warner Bros. Discovery is considering a sale, having already rejected reported offers worth more than $60bn.

Google and Meta, meanwhile, gobble up to 60% of all UK advertising spend, a shift in the last decade that has hit ITV particularly hard.

When it was founded 70 years ago, the third channel was the only way advertisers could reach television viewers. Today, it and Sky are competing for a slice of a shrinking pie, with one source citing an estimate that their combined UK advertising revenue is nine times smaller than Google and Meta’s.

Any proposed deal will face regulatory scrutiny from Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority, but both parties will argue that these commercial realities mean consolidation would strengthen the broadcast sector rather than weaken it.

ITV still generates critical and commercial hits and live moments. Last year, the largest audiences for sport (England’s Euro 2024 semi-final), drama (Mr Bates v the Post Office) and entertainment (I’m a Celebrity) were all on ITV.

Translating that into a commercial model that satisfies investors has proved difficult, with the general drift of the UK economy not helping. The 19% bump in the share price on news of the proposed takeover may be a welcome series finale.

Elon Musk could be on track for a $1trn pay packet.

Tesla shareholders have approved the whopping financial package for the CEO – who’s already worth an estimated $491bn – if he hits a series of ambitious targets over the next 10 years.

But that $1trn figure (or £761,910,000,000) – which is both one thousand billion and one million million – is almost impossible to imagine for most people.

Even so, we have drilled down into the numbers and examined what you can do with a trillion US dollars – and it turns out, quite a lot.

Show me the money

Laid end to end, a trillion one-dollar bills would cover a distance of approximately 156 billion metres.

That could wrap around the equator 3,890 times, easily reach the sun from Earth (around 149.6 million km) or loop from Earth to the moon 405 times.

That many one-dollar notes could cover a massive area (roughly 10,339 km squared), meaning you could blanket nearly all of Lebanon or Jamaica in bills.

Spend it on sport

You could splash out on virtually all of the world’s major sporting leagues.

The clubs which make up the Premier League are relatively cheap ($30bn), and even when snapping up the UEFA Champions League clubs and the big five top divisions of Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, there’s still $858bn left in the kitty.

The four major US sports leagues for ice hockey, baseball, basketball, and American football (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) have a rough valuation of $544bn, according to Sportico.

But then add the IPL cricket league ($120bn) and F1 ($23.1bn) and Musk still has change from an estimated total spend of $829.7bn.

Take over Tesla’s rivals

He could buy up the top 15 largest publicly traded automakers (excluding Tesla) by market capitalisation.

They would include firms like Japan’s Toyota ($275bn), Chinese automaker BYD ($120bn), and luxury brands like Ferrari ($81bn) and Mercedes-Benz ($62bn), as well as BMW ($52bn), Volkswagen ($50bn) and Ford ($48bn).

But there would still be a little change left over; the total bill would be an eye-watering $992bn.

Buy up San Diego

He could buy up every single residential property in San Diego County – valued at a total of $1trn. Seattle is just slightly out of reach at $1.1trn, according to recent data from real estate firm Zillow.

But if he wanted to buy big – there is always Tennessee. The total value of homes in the US state is estimated at $957bn. Or there is Maryland, which at $1.01trn could be bought if he can find a little more cash behind the sofa.

Sadly, he would struggle to scoop up London’s entire housing stock, which in February was valued at just under £2trn ($2.53trn), according to agents Savills.

Cities like New York ($4.6trn) and Los Angeles ($3.9trn) are also not within his budget, hosting America’s most expensive residential markets.

Do something charitable?

There is always the possibility Musk could follow in the footsteps of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who intends to give away 99% of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.

He could give every single man, woman, and child in the US a share of his cash pile. They would receive approximately $2,917.32 (£2,223.29), based on a population estimate of 342.7 million.

Although it would be roughly $14,348.79 (£10,935.20) for every person (roughly 69.6 million) in the UK.

If he wanted to give the entire globe an early Christmas present, then based on the rough world population estimate of 8.2 billion, everyone would receive $121.80 (£92.87).

Pay off the credit card

With $1trn, he could instantly rewrite history and erase debt interest payments and the government debt from dozens of the world’s sovereign nations.

Or Musk could wipe out the debts of Singapore ($1trn) or South Korea ($0.99trn) in one go, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook (Oct 2025).

But when it comes to the biggest debt-laden countries, $1trn would not even touch the sides.

The US has $38.3trn of government debt (just over one third of the total global debt pile) while the UK has a modest $4.1trn.

Prince Harry has apologised to Canada for wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers cap while attending a World Series game against the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Duke of Sussex and his wife, Meghan, were pictured at the baseball game last Tuesday, which Toronto ultimately lost to the Dodgers in a seventh-game decider on Sunday.

The prince joked to Canadian broadcaster CTV that he wore the Dodgers merchandise “under duress”.

He said it felt like “the polite thing to do” after being invited to the dugout by the team’s owner.

“Firstly, I would like to apologise to Canada for wearing it,” he said.

“Secondly, I was under duress. There wasn’t much choice.”

“When you’re missing a lot of hair on top, and you’re sitting under floodlights, you’ll take any hat that’s available,” he joked.

“Game five, game six, game seven, I was Blue Jays throughout. Now that I’ve admitted that, it’s going to be pretty hard for me to return back to Los Angeles.”

Harry, who is in Canada for Remembrance Week events, conducted the interview wearing a Toronto Blue Jays cap.

He added he was “devastated” at the Blue Jays’ defeat.

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The royal couple, who met in 2016 and married in 2018, moved to California in 2020 – after initially setting up home in Canada. They live in Montecito with their children Archie, six, and Lilibet, four.

Harry’s father, the King, is the head of state of Canada – a Commonwealth nation.

Meghan has previously shown her support for the Blue Jays, a nod to her former home city.

The former actress lived in Toronto while filming the legal drama Suits. She appeared in more than 100 episodes.

She and Harry also spent time together there during the early stages of their relationship.