Originally Posted by Antbox:
“Channel 4 (and ITV and the rest of the industry) knew that offers were likely to be invited for GBBO but no formal offers were made until after LP had notified the BBC that they did not wish to continue negotiations with them.”
“Channel 4 (and ITV and the rest of the industry) knew that offers were likely to be invited for GBBO but no formal offers were made until after LP had notified the BBC that they did not wish to continue negotiations with them.”
No formal offers? So LP demanding that the BBC match or exceed £25 million per year (the sane figure that C4 had come up with) was just coincidence?
Or is someone playing with words here regarding what constitutes a "formal offer"? We can rightly assume that talks with C4 had reached such an advanced stage that not only did LP have a "closure" figure laid out, all parts of the contract were ready to be signed off within a couple of hours.
The long & short of it was that LP had been in an advanced stage of negotiation with C4 long before the talks with the BBC had irretrievably broken down (or, in accordance with the BBC's public statement at the time, broken down but hopefully could be picked up again). At that stage LP had a taxi ready & waiting to zip across town to tie up the deal with C4.



