ITV has sold Friends Reunited for £25m four years after buying it for £120m.

The buyer is Brightsolid Limited, which is owned by DC Thomson, Dundee-based publisher of comics such as the Beano.

The announcement came with the release of half-year results, which were hit by the worst decline in UK television advertising on record.

ITV made a pre-tax loss of £105m in the period. There was no more information given on the recruitment of a new chief executive to replace Michael Grade.

Mr Grade is due to stand down by the end of 2009, following a regulatory review.

The £105m loss compares with a £1.5bn loss in the same period of 2008, although last year’s figure was hit by a £1.6bn charge, reducing the value of investments made in 2000 and 2004.

ITV’s advertising revenues fell by 15%, which was slightly better than the 17% fall in the overall market.

Its chief operating officer, John Cresswell, told the BBC that advertising revenues were improving.

“We’re down 15% in the first half and in the third quarter the decline is still pretty tough at -12%,” he said.

But September for us is at -7% so the direction of travel is good.”

The broadcaster’s pension fund deficit had ballooned to £538m by 30 June, compared with £178m at the end of 2008.

ITV is in the middle of a cost-cutting programme, which aims to deliver savings of £155m this year and £285m a year by 2011.

Spare bedroom

ITV paid an initial £120m for the Friends Reunited website in 2005, but was due to pay an additional sum of up to £55m this year depending on the performance of the site.

The company buying it, Brightsolid, already owns findmypast.com, which operates the official 1901 and 1911 census websites.

Friends Reunited was launched in July 2000 from the spare bedroom of Steve and Julie Pankhurst’s home in North London.

Its model of helping people to find old friends from their old schools, colleges or clubs attracted millions of users to the site.

But more recently, it has been overtaken by social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.