Media / Talk of the trade: Thames flows on

RICHARD DUNN, chief executive of Thames Television, which lost the London weekday ITV franchise last year, emerged from self-imposed purdah last week and told the Royal Television Society he was looking forward to his company - slimmed from 1,600 employees to 140 - becoming an independent producer and, perhaps, Channel 5's prime mover. But his suggestion that the Independent Television Commission had been deterred by its lawyers from using the 'exceptional circumstances' clause to keep Thames in place was hotly denied by David Glencross, the ITC chief executive.