UK broadcasters Granada and Carlton are planning to combine their marketing operations to save costs and increase revenues.

Carlton chief executive Gerry Murphy told the Financial Times newspaper that the joint approach would result in a "virtual enterprise", to be launched in the autumn.

The two firms are the biggest franchise holders of the ITV television network, but have been hit hard by the slump in advertising revenue during the past year.

Earlier this year Granada and Carlton had explored a full-blown merger, but abandoned the plan when it became clear that regulatory approval was unlikely.

"Under current competition rules a full merger would be very difficult", a Carlton spokesman told the Reuters news agency.

"This is an initiative to make ITV more competitive, to improve its efficiency and marketing."

'Virtual enterprise'

The two media firms hope to co-ordinate their programme scheduling, and make joint approaches to advertisers.

They want to "make the most of marketing ITV to advertisers... in a multi-channel environment", the spokesman said.

Although both firms will still act a separate companies, they will combine back office operations.

The joint venture is set to launch this autumn.

Scottish takeover talks

Carlton currently operates five regional ITV franchises, including HTV and Central, while Granada runs Meridian and Anglia.

Earlier this year, another collaboration of Carlton and Granada suffered a spectacular failure, when the pay-TV firm ITV Digital collapsed and went into liquidation.

In June both firms bought a controlling stake in the faltering ITN news channel, which is operated by the company that supplies ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 with news.

Both firms are currently rumoured to be in talks with Scottish Media Group over buying the television franchises Grampian and Scottish TV.