ITV sells Friends Reunited for £25m

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The broadcaster said it had agreed to sell the social networking site to DC Thomson, publisher of the Beano and the Dundee-based Courier, for £25 million.

ITV, which bought Friends Reunited for £120 million in 2005, said the deal was subject to approval by the competition authorities.

DC Thomson said the acquisition of Friends Reunited would create Britain's leading genealogy business by bringing together the Genes Reunited site and findmypast.com.

These sites operate the official 1901 and 1911 Census websites respectively in association with The National Archives.

Friends Reunited, which has 20.6 million members, was launched in 2000. Genes Reunited was launched in 2003 and has 9 million members worldwide and over 500 million names listed.

Friends Reunited has suffered in recent years as rival social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace emerged on the scene.

ITV revealed that television advertising across the market suffered its worst year-on-year decline on record during the six months to June 30.

The firm said its net television advertising revenue (NAR) fell by 15%, or £108 million, but said this was better than the overall market decline of 17%.

It also said there were signs that the advertising slump was moderating in the second half, with revenues predicted to be down 12% in the third quarter and 7% by the end of the year.