Tony Ball, the former chief executive of BSkyB, has joined the board of BT, a sign that his chances of taking over from Michael Grade at ITV are receding.

The former television engineer, who ran Sky for four years, was interested in the ITV job, but the commercial broadcaster is keener to draw up a shortlist from outside the usual pool of British television executives.

Yesterday Mr Ball was telling friends that he had given up on ITV, although he does not believe that his £60,000-a-year non-executive job at BT would prevent him taking the helm of the broadcaster.

BT has gradually tried to expand into television, with its BT Vision interactive service creating the potential for some conflicts of interest. Nobody has sat on the board of BT and ITV, or its predecessor companies, at the same time for at least a decade.

Nevertheless, BT said that its broadcasting activities were sufficiently small that it could not be construed as competing with the leading free-to-air commercial network. A spokesman for the telecoms company said: “There’s no reason why you couldn’t sit on both boards; Michael Grade is the chairman of Pinewood Shepperton, a film studio.”

Mr Ball’s own statement on joining the board made clear that he believes telecoms and television are becoming increasingly integrated. “The convergence of the computer and the television, entertainment and communications has only just begun,” he said.

Mr Grade said that he would step aside as executive chairman in April and the broadcaster has been slowly searching for a successor.

ITV’s largest shareholder, BSkyB, which is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, has been ambivalent about a Ball appointment — a sentiment that has not been lost on ITV, either.

Friends of Mr Ball also say that the Briton is reluctant to relocate from his family home in Barcelona — he is married to a Spaniard — unless he is actively wooed.

He commuted from Spain to act as chairman of the advisory board of Kabel Deutschland, a German cable company with more than nine million subscribers. But, after completing a non-compete period, as a condition from his stepping aside at Sky in favour of James Murdoch, Mr Ball is raising his profile in the UK. He believes that speculation about ITV and the BT appointment has helped to “put him back on the radar”.

Russell Reynolds, the headhunter acting for ITVs, is trying to drum up a list of foreign executives, ideally with internet experience. That exercise, though, remains at a fairly early stage and, with ITV’s share price picking up from the trough of two months ago, the broadcaster believes that it has a little time.

Contenders cited include Bruce Churchill, who runs DirecTV’s Latin American satellite broadcasting business, Guillaume de Posch, a Belgian who ran ProSiebenSat.1, the German broadcaster, and Gerhard Zeiler, the Anglophile Austrian who runs RTL, which owns Five.

Meanwhile, one high-profile possible British contender — Dawn Airey, the chief executive of Five — categorically ruled herself out yesterday, saying simply “no” in answer to questions as to whether she would go back to ITV.

Her chances were seen as extremely remote because she fell out with Mr Grade when she unexpectedly quit as ITV’s head of global content to go to Five.