Richard Desmond The media tycoon sealed his takeover of Channel Five last night, in a deal worth £103.5m.

The deal was sealed with immediate effect, giving ownership to Northern & Shell, the publishing group owned by Richard Desmond. “This is a major acquisition and a long-term project,” said Richard Desmond, who said that he would “invest heavily in talent and content both in the programming we already have and in home-grown programming”.

Richard Desmond went on to say that Coronation Street, The X Factor and Panorama were all programmes he would like the channel to broadcast.

Asked if he was asking the BBC to make shows for his network, he said: “Well, why not, why not? Why can’t we have Panorama on Channel Five? It’s a jolly good programme.”

He added: “Channel Five has proved itself to be a credible and competitive British broadcaster with some of the most sought-after programmes from home and overseas.

“I’m delighted to have taken ownership of the network and I know that, with the right investment, drive and leadership, it can go from strength to strength as a competitive broadcaster and a modern player for the digital consumer.”

Richard Desmond owns both the Daily and Sunday Express’s national newspapers and also owns the Daily Star and its Sunday counterpart, he also owns the celebrity lifestyle magazine OK!. Northern & Shell also owns a series of adult television channels. European legislation means Richard Desmond will not be able to advertise his print titles on Channel Five. He will, however, be able to advertise Channel Five in his publications.

Gerhard Zeiler, the RTL chief executive said: “With a significant recovery of the UK TV advertising market and Five performing well in the first half of 2010, we saw a window of opportunity to realise a transaction based on a fair evaluation of Five.”

Claire Enders, founder of Enders Analysis, said: “Desmond is someone who has a real interest in the media. He is an innovative entrepreneur. The edge he has is the free publicity in the Star, OK! and the Express. He will build the buzz and the glamour in the publications, which is something the channel has been sorely lacking.”

Richard Desmond says he will keep Channel Five as a public service channel. This means a prime slot on the electronic programme guide, but the broadcaster must pledge to screen a certain amount of news and current affairs programming.

He also revealed he will pay the £20m to allow Channel Five back in the Project Canvas, the joint venture with other partners that includ the BBC, Channel 4 and BT, to bring an online catchup TV service to the living room set. Channel Five had walked away from the venture earlier this year.

Richard Desmond cleared the takeover with the media watchdog Ofcom earlier this week, and is expected to be called in front of the House of Commons culture committee, who will quiz him on his plans for the channel.

Channel Five launched to great fanfare in 1997, backed by Pearson Television, United Business Media, Warburg Pincus and CLT-Ufa. CLT and Pearson later merged to form RTL, which subsequently took 100 per cent ownership. The group initially made its name in soft porn movies, football and action films, an image that the current chairman and chief executive Dawn Airey has worked hard to shed.

Recently the channel has struggled and in the last financial year, RTL was forced to write off more than half of the value of its UK operations. Channel Five’s earnings had also fallen 30 per cent to £250m and the management was forced into a harsh cost-cutting programme, stripping 87 jobs from 354 staff, also cutting £65m in costs. It had been hit very hard by the downturn which saw advertising plunge 12.5 per cent in 2009.

Ms Enders concluded: “Mr Desmond will be able to build market share at the channel through investment and cross-promotion, but will Five ever be a competitor to ITV? Hell no.”

Latest TV searches:

World tv pc website database keeps growing

We have just had a count up and we now have an eye watering 2,500 websites to choose from in our online tv database. Choose from a variety of categories and get watching tv how it should be watched – Online and On demand.

Internet TV continues to grow in popularity at an amazing , with websites being added daily. And you can always find a website that interests you. The internet tv landscape has far more than the usual run of the mill TV shows, movies and sports streams. You can also watch specialist niche TV Websites on every subject on the planet.

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Just make sure before you start watching all of these internet tv websites that you have plenty of free time, because you wont be coming up for air for sometime.

A new website has popped up that lets viewers from around the world start watching Hulu. How cool is that? And how legal? Before now if you wanted to view Hulu streams but were outside the US then you had to fiddle around with IP addresses with random success. Now you can just go visit TVGorge, a newly launched Flash tv streaming site that is jam packed with top shows.

The big question is though. is this legal?

TV Gorge Lets You Watch Hulu Shows

The website says that it uses searching and indexing techniques to detect and gather content from third-party TV streaming websites around the world. The company says that its proprietary script is capable of detecting the best source for TV shows and automatically compile the information for its database. Each video is said to be manually screened to make sure it is of high quality and working ok.

TVGorge adds that it does not effectively store video files on its own servers and only links to or embeds existing videos from a ‘variety of sources’. Listed at the bottom of the homepage are partners such as CBS’ TV.com, Hulu, TVGuide.com and TVDuck.

Looking at the site content cannot fail to impress though with all eight seasons of 24 areas well as episodes of top shows like Californication, 30 Rock, Heroes, Lost, CSI, Mad Men, Grey’s Anatomy, The Simpsons and many more.

In its T&C’s the website says it fully respects the intellectual property rights of third parties, you cannot help but wonder if it does have any agreement with Hulu, CBS and the other networks, so watch the streams while you can. It may not be around too long.

ITV one of the big UK TV networks have seen massive profit losses. Is it due to the Internet TV boom?

Well partly yes, the fact that viewing habits have changed and the availability of content is now so massive has had an effect on audience figures and advertising revenue.

The network are planning to cut 600 jobs from its staff of 4,500, reduce by £65m, its program budget and also plans to sell its website venture, Friends Reunited as it revealed a pre tax profit loss of 41% in 2008. Advertising is down by around 17% for the first quarter of 2009.

The company say it intends to make efficiency savings in its business of £50m this year and £70m next year. With savings to be made in “central services and across ITV studios operations outside the London area”.

ITV chief Michael Grade said that the advertising market was “the most challenging I have experienced in over 30 years in UK broadcasting”. “Our priorities have to be aligned to the changed economic context. The board therefore recognises that the 2012 revenue targets set in 2007 are no longer appropriate and we are focusing on our core business as a producer-broadcaster, on reducing our costs and on cash generation.”

ITV’s network programme budget of £1bn will be cut back by £65m this year, held flat next year and cut a further £70m in 2011.

The company will also sell its social networking website Friends Reunited and online business directory Scoot. Also scaling back on regional web TV service ITV Local.

ITV reported a 41% drop in adjusted pre-tax profits to £167m last year and a 32% drop in earnings before interest, tax and amortisation to £211m. The broadcaster’s overall loss was £2.7bn including a goodwill impairment charge of £1.6bn recognised at half year and a further £1.09bn recorded in the full year due to a deterioration of the markets.

Even its website ventures have been tanking with a rise in losses from £12m in 2007 to £20m last year. ITV said this was due to a fall in profits at Friends Reunited, investment in itv.com and costs relating to the closure of Kangaroo, the online TV venture with Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide.

However on a brighter side, revenue from its online streaming catch up tv service increased by 9% to £36m.

So there you have it networks, concentrate on internet tv and start making hay.

Our online video website guide has had an update. Hundreds more Free TV websites have been shoehorned into our already bulging video site list which currently stands at around 2000 websites.

Internet TV is taking off in a massive way, with a massive and growing number of internet sites and channels broadcasting not just the usual TV shows, sports and movies. But also niche videos on pretty much any subject you can think of.

All of these websites offer free TV , if you know where to look.

This is where web sites like our good selves are proving invaluable to media hungry surfers the world over.

Worldtvpc is now the biggest and most comprehensive free internet TV listand guide to tingle your senses. Forget Cable and pay TV, It is the only one stop shop you need to find all your favourites for free.

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Go to a website like TV Lesson and learn how to compose music, dissect a frog or count to one hundred in French.

Go to VehicleFixer and learn how to change the oil on your Chevy.

If your feeling lazy and unfit, go to workoutz and have a total body workout. Of course you may then need to visit WebMD to find out what you just pulled.

And so it goes on and on. The beauty of Online TV is that you watch what you want (however crazy it may be to some there is a video site based around it) and when you want.

Just browse the simple navigation and categories which help you quickly locate the internet TV streams you want.

Visit our online video website guide