Ant and Dec sign mega new ITV deal

Ant and Dec sign mega new ITV deal
Ant and Dec sign mega new ITV deal

Ant and Dec have signed a new, exclusive two-year deal with ITV, thought to be worth around £10 million each to the presenters. The Geordie pair have been working on a family challenge game show with the working title Push The Button, which will air on ITV1 next year. ITV declined to comment on reports the new contract is worth around £10 million each to the pair, who are thought to be taking a 10 per cent pay cut. The deal takes Ant and Dec's long-term relationship with ITV through to December 2011. Ant said: "We are delighted to sign with ITV for another two years to continue to make the programmes we love like Saturday Night Takeaway, Britain's Got Talent and I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! - there is no better home for our shows." Dec added: "We're particularly excited about the new media opportunities, which will allow us to make fresh and exciting content for online, and also launching our brand new entertainment show Push The Button in 2010." The duo rose to fame as teenage actors on BBC children's show Byker Grove before a stint as pop singers. They joined ITV in 1998 presenting the Saturday morning shows SM:TV Live and CD:UK and they have been exclusively signed to ITV since 2000. Ant told the Edinburgh International Television Festival in August that the pair were prepared to take a pay cut in the recession-hit industry. He said: "You have to be realistic. If the whole of the industry is suffering it would be naive to assume that we would not suffer, too."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.