Lord Hollick yesterday outlined his plans to reshape United News & Media around business publishing, market research, exhibitions and the internet, which may result in the sale of the group's remaining television assets.
The Labour peer was setting out his stall following the £1.75bn sale of the group's trio of ITV franchises to Granada Media last week.
The trimmed-down company will be clinging to the coat-tails of the FTSE 100 and Lord Hollick said it was now incumbent upon him to explain the value of the company to investors and to begin rebuilding through acquisitions.
Lord Hollick insisted that he would stay with the company despite the loss of its most high-profile assets.
"These are businesses that I have been involved in for 20 years - a lot longer than I was involved with TV - and they are businesses we engage in with a passion. They turn me and everyone else here on," he said. "The noise surrounding the TV assets has tended to crowd other parts of the business out."
United News' shares were marked 8p higher at 833p.
Of the remaining TV assets he said ITN - in which the company has a 20% stake - would likely float next year, giving United News the chance to sell.
Its stake in SDN, the digital channels that carry ONdigital's pay-per-view movie service would be sold to ONdigital once legislation allows.
The group's 35% stake in Channel 5 is expected to be bought by media group RTL, which owns the rest, although Lord Hollick said there had been no offer made so far. He spoke with some sadness for the first time about the failure of the company to win a place at the table in the consolidation of ITV.
United News had its plans to merge with Carlton Communications scuppered by competition authorities.
"It is with some regret that we didn't succeed in securing a leadership in ITV but either you are number one in that game or you are out," he said.
"But we gained a very high price for those assets and I think our shareholders are benefiting enormously."
He reiterated that the Express newspaper titles and the Daily Star are not for sale and claimed never to have met the Barclay Brothers, owners of the Scotsman and Sunday Business and often named as would-be buyers.
The well-worn argument of leveraging the brands online and using the papers for cross promotion were trotted out. The Daily Star may be ailing but Megastar, the newspaper's online version had 13.5m page impressions last month the company said.
The company also disclosed the £19.6m cost of its abandoned merger with Carlton.
United News reported a 14% increase in revenues for the first half of the year to £1.1bn and pre-tax profits flat at £138m.
