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STV has bought a production firm behind TV series such as The Hit List and Lego Masters in a deal worth up to £24m.

The purchase of Greenbird Media brings the number of labels within the STV Studios umbrella from nine to 24.

The deal means STV Studios now has expanded bases in Glasgow and London, as well as offices in Cardiff, Belfast, Brighton and Manchester.

Greenbird has a portfolio of programme formats which are being commissioned for multiple series.

It owns majority stakes in unscripted production firms Crackit Productions and Tuesday's Child and minority positions in a further 12 production companies, including Rumpus Media, Glasgow-based Hello Halo and Flicker Productions.

This year, companies within the Greenbird network are expected to produce more than 350 hours of new programming across 25 returning series.

STV Group said the acquisition, which involves an initial cash consideration of £21.4m, would be "materially earnings enhancing".

STV chief executive Simon Pitts said: "Growing STV Studios into the UK's No. 1 nations and regions production company is one of our core strategic objectives.

"This transformative acquisition represents a major step towards that goal, adding significant scale and creative firepower to the group and immediately accelerating STV's overall diversification in terms of both revenue and profit."

STV Group owes its name to its television station but the importance of the traditional broadcasting business is declining.

Linear TV audiences are falling across the board. Straightforward TV advertising is still very important but advertisers are looking at other ways to reach consumers.

Even without the current economic difficulties, this would be a challenge.

So the importance of the channel 3 service for central and northern Scotland to the company inevitably changes - online and the production business are obvious areas of potential growth.

The production side, STV Studios, makes programmes under order for a wide range of broadcasters including the ����ý.

Seeing the STV name on a rival channel may confuse some viewers but STV Studios is basically an independent production company which is separate from the channel 3 service - it wins commissions on merit just like hundreds of other production companies, large and small.

The rights to these formats and productions can be important too.

Today's acquisition can only boost that business. But it is also important to keep coming up with new formats and win new commissions - sooner or later, virtually all programmes come to an end, so successful production companies need a stream of new ideas.

There is also the risk that in the current economic environment commissioning budgets may continue to fall too - Channel 4 has recently dropped or delayed a number of programmes on financial grounds leaving some independent production companies concerned.