ITV is finished as a broadcaster and terrestrial television will soon be obsolete, according to Chris Evans, the radio presenter.

Evans, soon to take over the Radio 2 breakfast slot from Terry Wogan, said that he may never return to television screens, despite creating and starring in successful shows including TFI Friday on Channel 4.

Evans, who tried to revamp ITV’s weekends in 2005 with the series OFI Sunday, says that Britain’s leading commercial broadcaster, badly hit by an advertising downturn, has no future. “They will never recover,” he told Word magazine.

ITV is missing out on the revenue streams earned by BSkyB, associate company of News International, owner of The Times, Evans claimed. BSkyB “gets at least three revenue streams out of every show — the set-top box, the rental of the service, then the adverts. ITV get one.”

He added: “People ask me if I want to go back to TV and I’m not sure it’s there to go back to. TV is just an invention, and all inventions eventually become obsolete.”

However, confidence at ITV is returning after the record viewing figures generated by this year’s X Factor. Advertising slots for the final are being sold for up to £250,000 during key breaks.

Collision, a drama serial scheduled across five nights this week, also produced strong figures and the broadcaster has high hopes for next summer’s World Cup.

In his interview, Evans said that the reaction to the "Sachsgate" affair, which cost Lesley Douglas, then head of Radio 2, her job and led to the suspension of Jonathan Ross, was entirely justified.

“Something was acutely wrong,” he said of the failed procedures that led to the offensive phone call being aired. “Mistakes were made, Lesley Douglas should not have lost her job, but the rest was right. “For that sort of abuse to happen on Radio 2 was unnacceptable, 100 per cent."

Evans said that his priority when taking over the Wogan show next month “is not turning people off.” However, the show would evolve. “It’s like planting seeds in a garden - some will be in the wrong place.”

Despite the perception that Wogan’s audience was elderly, the average age is 53, said the presenter. The average age for Evans’s current drivetime Radio 2 show was 51. “It’s not Matt Monroe and Bing Crosby,” he said of the Radio 2 audience’s musical tastes.

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