Has anyone else noticed the eerie parallels between the remarkable rise of Charles Allen and the plot of The Usual Suspects ? The mysterious character who bumps off all his rivals and walks away with the cash turns out to have been the quietest, most unassuming suspect of all.
And so it was with the modest accountant from Lanarkshire who did away with flamboyant nemeses such as Michael Green and Clive Hollick and now presides over a £6bn entity with an iron grip on TV advertising and a mission to wring even greater profits out of commercial programming with fewer public service commitments.
In the months ahead it will be fascinating to see whether viewers will be as seduced as the shareholders and the authorities who passed the merger.
At least one broking house is salivating at the prospect of a £40m cut in next year's programming budget. Music to the money-men - misery for producers. And while Ofcom extols the need to strengthen public service broadcasting, Charles is seeking to have the definition of PSB widened to include I'm a Celebrity? Get me out of Here! If that's a public service, I'm Lord Reith. It would be a tragedy if the very genres that contribute to ITV's distinctiveness such as regional programmes and children's are swept away in an attempt to boost the bottom line.
Then there's the small matter of the indies. The BBC always gets a bad press when it fails to meet its 25% statutory independent production quota but it is extraordinary that ITV is rarely - if ever - castigated for barely exceeding its own. Codes of practice to ensure fair terms of trade are one thing, but the percentage of qualifying programmes made for ITV by real indies has fallen over each of the past three years. When innovative producers like Patrick Uden are going to the wall, David Liddiment's warning that little now stands between 'Nigel Pickard's commissioning meritocracy and the demands of his biggest shareholder' should be taken deadly seriously.
Nevertheless, a reinvigorated, single ITV is as welcome an addition to the competitive television landscape as Sky itself was 15 years ago. It also seems to have learned the lesson that instead of blowing £1bn on crackpot technology and then running off to the regulator at every turn, genuine competition is healthy.
So here's to you ITV plc; the Competition Commission loves you more than you would know. After 13 years and 11 mergers, the third 800lb gorilla of British broadcasting has a spring in her step.
Let's hope Charles and his team have time to make their mark before any German, American or passing Russian oligarch waving a wodge of cash shows them the door and makes monkeys of them all.
Dawn Airey is managing director of Sky Networks
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