Michael Grade, the executive chairman of ITV, has apologised to stars such as Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly, popularly known as Ant & Dec, after the phone-in scandal that led to ITV being fined £5.7 million over the abuse of premium-rate lines.

Mr Grade, speaking at the broadcaster's annual meeting, said: “This is an historic series of mistakes. The way we handled the mess has been open and transparent ... our job is to make sure it does not happen again and apologise to the public and artists involved.”

Ant & Dec's shows were at the centre of the investigation. Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway was fined £3 million for repeated breaches over a three-year period to 2006, but ITV insisted that none of its presenters were aware of any wrongdoing.

Discussing the group's results, Mr Grade said that the turnaround is on track, but he reiterated that it was a long-term plan for three to five years. The group had identified further cost savings for next year on top of the planned £41million savings for 2008.

ITV expects the television advertising market in the first half of this year to fall by 1 per cent, but insisted that it will outperform this. Revenues for the first quarter were up by 3percent to £492million compared with £479million in 2007 and net advertising revenue was up by 2percent. However, revenue from broadcasting fell by about 2percent to £409million.

Mr Grade said that the group was successfully selling programmes and formats internationally. A Chinese version of Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway had attracted 55 million viewers.

Some shareholders were disappointed. One asked: “How can you and Mr [John] Cresswell [the finance director] be accepting your salaries? These should surely be clawed back. This board is no more making the grade than Charles Allen.” The shares, down by 50 per cent in a year, yesterday fell another 1p to 61.9p.

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