SPEAKERS from some of the UK’s biggest media and digital companies will be visiting Liverpool next month to debate how the sector can survive the recession.

The event comes as a new analysis of the media sector, by Goldman Sachs, reversed previous dire predictions for television advertising, causing shares in ITV to rise yesterday.

The b.Tween event at Fact, on June 11 and June 12, aims to bring together industry giants with small businesses and digital specialists.

Speakers will include Jeremy Ettinghausen, Penguin’s digital publishing “guru”, Jon Mitchell, head of sales at music streaming website Spotify, and representatives from companies including Orange, Channel 4 and the UK Film Council.

A spokesman said: “The media industries are desperate for innovation now more than ever. The expertise needed for this will come from the ecosystem of talent that b.TWEEN is plugged into.”

Meanwhile, the Goldman Sachs industry report yesterday upped its ITV rating from sell to buy and added it to a “conviction” list indicating a potential for high returns for investors – the first free television stock on this list since 2007.

ITV shares rose around 10% at one point, while other media stocks also saw gains as Goldman pointed to reassuring signs that decimated advertising revenues across the sector would start to pick up. Events such as the World Cup and the UK general election could also help media firms, the report added.

Goldman said it now expects total UK advertising to grow by 2% in 2010, compared with its previous forecast of a 5% decline. The reversal was particularly prominent for ITV1, which was expected to see a 7% slump in ad revenues next year, but is now forecast to experience 2% growth.

Forecasts were based on the expectation of its economists that the UK recovery in 2010 would be slightly stronger than in France and Germany.