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John Cresswell, ITV's chief operating officer and finance director, said that the three partners are confident that it will be ready in September or October. The initial projection had been for the end of the year.

Cresswell's comments follow the appointment of Ashley Highfield as Kangaroo's chief executive. Highfield, who led the launch of the BBC's hugely popular iPlayer, will review Kangaroo when he starts his new job on 1 July.

"It is going really well," Cresswell said. "Ashley's appointment is fantastic. With all new technical launches, you always

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have a soft launch before you unveil the whole thing."

He added that the priority is to make sure the service is reliable.

"It is about making sure that when the consumer gets to it, it won't fall over," he said. "No one wants a Terminal 5 online."

Earlier this week MediaWeek claimed that the service would be renamed SeeSaw and will not launch this years, as it is being help up pending approval by the BBC Trust and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

A spokeswoman for the project-currently-known-as-Kangaroo would not comment on "speculation" about the name, which is said to be one of several under consideration. But she denied that the service would not be ready until 2009.

The OFT is considering whether there are grounds for referring the joint venture to the Competition Commission while the BBC Trust has an obligation to ensure that any project by BBC Worldwide, the corporation's commercial arm, does not distort the market.

[photo: Kangaroo Sign by mr toaster]