ITV

'Independent Television' (generally known as 'ITV', but also as 'ITV Network') is a public service network of British commercial television broadcasters, set up under the Independent Television Authority (ITA) to provide competition to the BBC. ITV is the oldest commercial television network in the UK. Since 1990 and the Broadcasting Act 1990, its legal name has been 'Channel 3', the number 3 having no real meaning other than to distinguish it from BBC One, BBC Two and Channel 4 - prior to this, the network had no legal overall name. The name Channel 3 has to date rarely been used outside of a legal context.
ITV is to be distinguished from 'ITV plc', the company that resulted from the merger of Granada plc and Carlton Communications in 2004 and which owns all of the Channel 3 broadcasting licences in England, Wales, the Scottish/English Border and the Isle of Man. Similarly ITV1 is the brand used by ITV plc for the Channel 3 service in these areas.

Contents

Organisation

National teletext provider

Digital Channel 3

Public service broadcasting

Franchise Details

History

Future

Programmes

News

National and International

Regional

Sport

Children's

References

See also

External links

The ITV companies

Unofficial sites about ITV

Organisation

Unlike practically all other TV channels in the United Kingdom, ITV is not owned by one single company, although it has come close in recent years. Ofcom licences fifteen companies to provide regional ''Channel 3'' services in various areas of the UK, with a separate franchise for the national breakfast service between 6:00am and 9:25am, and two franchises for London, for a weekday service and a weekend service. The licences were last put out to full tender in 1991, since then they have been renewed on a rolling basis.
In addition to ITV plc as mentioned above, central and northern Scotland are served by SMG plc, the owner of the two franchises completely within Scotland, (branded as STV), Northern Ireland is served by UTV, under that name, whilst the Channel Islands are served by Channel Television, Ltd., also under the name ITV1.
Additionally, Channel 3 has since 1983 included a national breakfast franchise, currently held by GMTV, and has a national contractual teletext provider.

National teletext provider

The Public Teletext Licence^[1] allows the holder to broadcast a text-based information service around the clock on Channel 3 (as well as Channel 4 and S4C) frequencies. Teletext on ITV had been provided since 1974 by ORACLE, and since 1993 is provided by Teletext Ltd., whose news, sport and TV listings pages rival that of the BBC's television offering, Ceefax. Teletext Ltd. also provides digital teletext for the Channel 3 services, as well as the text output for both Channel 4 and S4C (which is covered under the same licence) and Five (under a separate licence).

Digital Channel 3

Since 1998, each of the Channel 3 franchisees have received gifted capacity on digital terrestrial television (DTT). As per the original agreement, each regional ITV contractor broadcasts its Channel 3 service from 9:25am to 6:00am daily, with the breakfast operator broadcasting in the remaining hours. However, unlike analogue broadcasts, the assigned capacity across DTT is able to carry multiple television services, which like Channel 3, are broadcast by the regional franchisee between the hours of 9:25am and 6:00am, with the breakfast contractor operating between 6:00am and 9:25am.
At present, all franchisees opt to broadcast ITV plc-owned channels, being ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and the CITV Channel, as opposed to broadcasting their own. Up until 2002, UTV or Northern Ireland carried a service known as UTV2, while both Scottish and Grampian opted to carry a service known as S2. The breakfast operator, currently GMTV, is obliged to broadcast between the hours of 6:00 and 9:25am daily. Alongside the Channel 3 GMTV service, GMTV also broadcasts GMTV2, which is broadcast on the same capacity as ITV2 and the CITV Channel. The company also holds a third GMTV3 licence, however prefers to sell its gifted capacity to ITV plc to broadcast ITV3 24 hours a day.
Channel 3 shares its space with Channel 4 on Multiplex 2, known as Digital 3&4.

Public service broadcasting

The right granted by Ofcom of Channel 3's nationally-available status on both analogue and digital television comes with responsibility, in the form of public service broadcasting. Alongside the BBC, Channel 4 and Five, the members of the ITV Network and GMTV all have a responsibility to broadcast various programming of public importance on their analogue stations. This includes quotas for news, current affairs, independent and European programming, children's and religious programming, and output containing subtitles, signing and audio description. In addition, Channel 3 stations are legally obliged to screen party election broadcasts on behalf of all the major political parties, and also other political events such as the Budget.
All the companies holding a franchise are members of ''ITV Network Limited'' (formerly the ''Independent Television Companies' Association Limited''), a not-for-profit body. It is this body that commissions programmes for the network, and schedules the network programming. However, in practice ITV plc, which owns eleven of the fifteen licences, dominates the system.
Networked programmes are mostly contributed by the regional companies although some are commissioned by the Network from independents. In addition, the entire network is obliged to broadcast national news sourced by a common contractor (currently ITN). All stations have the right to opt out of national programming (except for the national news) but generally do not, since most are owned by the one company and the others have limited resources for non-networked independent programme-making.

Franchise Details

The table below lists current franchises and the franchise holder.

Franchise Area	Franchise holder [2]	Franchise held since	Parent Company	On-air name
Regional Franchises
Northern Scotland	STV North Ltd	1961	SMG plc	STV
Central Scotland	STV Central Ltd	1957	SMG plc	STV
Northern Ireland	UTV plc	1959	UTV plc	UTV1
The Channel Islands	Channel Television Ltd	1962	Yattendon Investment Trust	ITV1 Channel Television2
English-Scottish border and Isle of Man	ITV Border Ltd	1961	ITV plc	ITV1 Border2
North East England	ITV Tyne Tees Ltd	1958	ITV plc	ITV1 Tyne Tees2
Yorkshire and Lincolnshire	Yorkshire Television Ltd	1968	ITV plc	ITV1 Yorkshire2
North West England	Granada Television Ltd	19563	ITV plc	ITV1 Granada2
Wales and the West of England	ITV Wales and West Ltd	1968	ITV plc	ITV1 Wales1/ ITV1 West2
The Midlands	ITV Central Ltd	1982	ITV plc	ITV1 Central2/ ITV1 Thames Valley2
East of England	Anglia Television Ltd	1959	ITV plc	ITV1 Anglia2
London Weekday	Carlton Television Ltd	1993	ITV plc	ITV1 London (Weekdays)2
London Weekend	London Weekend Television Ltd	1968	ITV plc	ITV1 London (Weekends)2
South and South East England	ITV Meridian Ltd	1993	ITV plc	ITV1 Meridian2/ ITV1 Thames Valley2
South West England	Westcountry Television	1993	ITV plc	ITV1 Westcountry2
National Franchises
National breakfast time	GMTV Ltd	1993	ITV plc (75%)/ The Walt Disney Company (25%)	GMTV4
National teletext service	Teletext Ltd.	1993	DMGT	Teletext

1. ITV1 Branding is used overnight

2. Branding is usually just "ITV1"

3. Prior to 1968 Granada Television's franchise included most of what is now Yorkshire Television's franchise area and operated a weekday only contract

4. Also uses CITV branding for children's output at the weekend and on digital service

History

Main articles: History of ITV

Independent Television was created following the Television Act 1954. The Independent Television Authority was set up to control and review the network. In the three main areas – London, the Midlands and the North of England – ITV was launched in September 1955, February 1956 and May 1956 respectively. The shape of the ITV Network and the course it has taken down the years has largely been controlled by regular refranchising rounds which occurred in 1964, 1968, 1974, 1982, and 1993. These rounds saw regions and franchise areas reshaped and franchise holders changed. Additionally, since the Broadcasting Act 1990 the consolidation of ITV companies has also had an important bearing on the direction of the network. In 1994 the chairman of Independent Television was arrested for sexual acts with children connected to the flagship children's network CITV.

Future

With more channels to choose from, digital television is increasingly putting pressure on the ITV network's ratings and advertising revenues. This has led a number of requests by franchisees to reduce the networks public service commitments. For example, most recently, ITV has shown interest in reducing its children's output. Critics of the broadcaster have also pointed to the reduction in commitment to regional programming and presentation.
Perhaps the most controversial change was the scrapping of the flagship late evening news programme, ''News at Ten'' in 1999, replacing it with a later, irregular scheduled and shorter news bulletin. ITV argued that the move would enable it to make the evening schedule more diverse and flexible, allowing them to show feature length films without a news break.
Such actions on the part of ITV together with a move to more populist programming has led to many commentators to accuse ITV of 'dumbing down'. In its defence, ITV does continue to show its major strengths in the fields of sports coverage and drama productions, and the production of 'high-brow' programming such as ''The South Bank Show'' has continued.
The threat to "Channel 3" advertising revenues has also led franchisees to increasingly diversifiy their businesses. Most notably, ITV plc owns five additional digital-only television channels, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, CITV Channel and Men & Motors and also time-shift channels of ITV2 and 3. This diversification has also led to numerous notable failures such as ITV Digital in 2002, which was owned by ITV plc's predecessors Carlton and Granada.

Programmes

For over 50 years of Independent Television, the homegrown programmes have become the most lovable and remembered as well as being extremely successful. Before the 1990s, all of the content for the channel was produced by the fifteen franchise licensees: the regional companies.
However, in the last decade, the number of productions have increased from the other independent production companies, not connected to the traditional ITV Network. Notable examples include Thames Television (itself a former ITV franchisee) and 2waytraffic, (previously Celador), producers of ''Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?''.
Increasingly ITV's primetime schedules are dominated by its soap operas, such as ''Coronation Street'', ''Emmerdale'', and popular cop drama ''The Bill'' (produced by Thames Television). At the start of the 21st century, Independent Television were bashed by critics for including a vast amount of cheap reality programming into the schedule, namely shows like ''Celebrity Fit Club'' and ''Celebrity Wrestling''.
Since then, ITV has struggled to regain trust in the viewer, as many inexpensive programming has not paid dividends. When Michael Grade took over as Executive Chairman in January of this year, ITV have shown signs of recovery, especially in the programming department.

News

National and International

Main articles: ITV News

Since the network started Independent Television News Limited has held the contract to produce news for the ITV Network. News bulletins are broadcast at 5:30am, 1:30pm, 6:30pm, and 10:30pm.

Regional

The regional ITV companies provide local programmes tailored for the regional audiences. All the ITV companies provide a main local bulletin at 6pm (preceded in the UTV region by a more ''features''-based programme at 5:30pm), as well as other local features and sport programming. Both news and regional programming for the ITV plc regions will be made available online during 2007 through the ITV Local VoD broadband initiative.

Sport

Main articles: ITV Sport

ITV covers many popular sports. The channel emphasises coverage of football (it holds the UK terrestrial rights to the UEFA Champions League). The channel shares coverage of international football events such as the World Cup with the BBC. It also covers Formula 1 racing and other motorsport, rugby, and other sports. The channel won the rights to broadcast The Boat Race in 2004.
On 30 March 2007, The Football Association confirmed that it had agreed a new four-year £425m television deal for ITV and Setanta Sports to show FA Cup and England international matches. This represents a 42% increase on the existing deal with the BBC and BSkyB.

Children's

Main articles: CITV

The network broadcasts childrens' programming under the CITV (Children's ITV) strand. Children's programming is broadcast across the network on weekend mornings.
In March 2006 ITV launched the CITV Channel, which is accessible by Sky, Virgin Media and Freeview, it shows all of the childrens programmes weekdays between 6am and 6pm and at weekends 6am to 12.30pm.
Following the launch of CITV, children's programmes were removed from the ITV line-up, which was challenged by Ofcom in April.

References

1. Public Teletext Licence

See also

★ List of ITV channels

★ List of British television channels

External links

The ITV companies

★ ITV homepage at itv.com

★ ITV plc at itv.com

★ itvlocal.com

★ channeltv.co.uk, channelonline.tv

★ smg.plc.uk, stv.tv

★ utvplc.com, u.tv

★ GM.TV

Unofficial sites about ITV

★ Transdiffusion Broadcasting System — a British communications history website

★ Independent TeleWeb — a history of ITV

★ The Historical Television Website — focusing on television in Southern England

★ Harlech House of Graphics — a site about ITV in Wales and the West of England

★ Tyne Tees Logo Page — about the North East England broadcaster

★ The TV Room — British and Irish television presentation

★ The Ultimate LWT Website — The history of London Weekend Television and downloadable video clips