Michael Grade, the chairman of ITV, today sought to distance the current management from the ill-fated acquisition of Friends Reunited, as the group struck a last-minute deal to sell the social networking site at a £145 million loss.

Shortly after announcing that ITV made a group loss of £105 million in the first six months of 2009, Mr Grade conceded that the sale of Friends Reunited was only struck at 5.01am this morning, less than two hours before the company published its figures.

It meant that ITV's results announcement did not include the sale agreement, saying instead that: "We are making good progress in the sales process of Friends Reunited". As a result, ITV hastily cobbled together a separate 150-word statement and issued it alongside the results document at 7am.

Under the terms of the deal, ITV will sell Friends Reunited to Brightsolid, a genealogy group owned by DC Thomson, the publisher of the Beano, for £25 million, after buying it for £170 million in December 2005.

Mr Grade said: "This management team did not buy it, let's be very clear about that."

However, he denied that ITV had overpaid for the business, arguing that it was reasonable at the time, before adding that £25 million "was the best price we could get".

Mr Grade said: "The market has changed dramatically....There's a bit of a recession on."

The original deal to buy Friends Reunited was struck under the leadership of Charles Allen, the then chief executive, who had hoped to produce related shows along the lines of Cilla Black’s Surprise Surprise. However, ITV’s programme makers resisted.

For the six months to June 30, the embattled broadcaster substantially reduced losses from £1.5 billion last year to £105 million.

Last year’s figure was hit by a £1.6 billion charge as ITV wrote down the value of its broadcasting businesses, including Meridian, Anglia and HTV. Stripping out exceptional items ITV reported a so-called adjusted pre-tax loss of £14 million in the first half, compared to a £91 million profit a year ago.

However, sales declined by 12 per cent to £909 million as advertising revenue continued to tumble. Net advertising revenue at ITV fell 15 per cent in the first half, and recorded a 17 per cent for the group. Shares in ITV fell by 3.1 per cent to 43.5p in early trading.

Mr Grade said: "UK advertising suffered its worst year-on-year decline on record over the first half. [However] the rate of market decline has eased slightly in the second half and ITV continues to outperform the market."

ITV expects the rate of decline of its advertising revenue to fall to 12 per cent in the third quarter.

ITV is still attempting to secure a new chief executive to take over the role from Michael Grade, who will remain at the group as chairman. "We are making good progress and will update the market at the earliest available opportunity."

The group had been hoping to announce the appointment today but negotiations with candidates are dragging on longer than anticipated.

The front-runners for the job remain Simon Fox, the HMV chief executive, and Pascal Cagni, the Frenchman behind Apple’s European operations, although others could come back into the race if terms with either cannot be reached.

ITV has been desperate to avoid being held to ransom by any single candidate refusing to sign up in time for the results unless they received a generous pay package.

At the same time, ITV also revealed that the deficit on its defined benefit pension scheme had ballooned from £178 million at the end of 2008 to £538 million on June 30.

However, debt has remained broadly flat at £728 million at the end of June, down slightly from £730 million six months earlier.

Mr Grade said: “Our financial results for the half year reflect the impact of the unprecedented downturn in television advertising, offset by the comprehensive action we are taking in mitigation.”

ITV cut costs by £57 million in the first half and is on course to achieve at least £155 million of savings over the year, rising to £215 million in 2010 and £285 million in 2011, Mr Grade said.

ITV's online revenues increased by 6 per cent to £18 million, as the number of views of ITV.com shot up from 31 million to 116 million.

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