ITV

History

The origins of ITV lie in the passing of the Television Act 1954, designed to break the monopoly on television held by the BBC Television Service. The act created the Independent Television Authority (ITA, then IBA after the Sound Broadcasting Act) to heavily regulate the industry and to award franchises. The first six franchises were awarded in 1954 for London, the Midlands and the North of England, with separate franchises for Weekdays and Weekends. The first ITV service to launch was London's Associated-Rediffusion on 22 September 1955, with the Midlands and North services launching in February 1956 and May 1956 respectively. Following these launches, the ITA awarded more franchises until the whole country was covered by fourteen regional stations, all launched by 1962.

The network has been modified several times through franchise reviews that have taken place in 1963, 1967, 1974, 1980 and 1991, during which broadcast regions have changed and service operators have been replaced. Only one service operator has ever been declared bankrupt, WWN in 1963, with all other operators leaving the network as a result of a franchise review. Separate weekend franchises were removed in 1968 (with the exception of London) and over the years more services were added; these included a national breakfast franchise from 1983 onward—operating between 6:00 am and 9:25 am—and a teletext service. The Broadcasting Act 1990 changed the nature of ITV; the then regulator the IBA was replaced with a light-touch regulator, the ITC; companies became able to purchase other ITV regional companies and franchises were now being awarded based upon a highest-bidder auction, with few safeguards in place. This heavily criticised part of the review saw four operators replaced, and the operators facing different annual payments to the Treasury: Central Independent Television, for example, paid only £2,000—despite holding a lucrative and large region—because it was unopposed, while Yorkshire Television paid £37.7 million for a region of the same size and status, owing to heavy competition.

Following the 1993 changes, ITV as a network began to consolidate with several companies doing so to save money by ceasing the duplication of services present when they were all separate companies. By 2004, the ITV network was owned by five companies, of which two, Carlton and Granada, had become major players by owning between them all the franchises in England, Wales, the Scottish borders and the Isle of Man. That same year, the two merged to form ITV plc with the only subsequent acquisitions being the takeover of Channel Television, the Channel Islands franchise, in 2011; and UTV, the franchise for ITV in Northern Ireland, in 2015.

Organisation (other networks)

The ITV network is not owned or operated by one company, but by a number of licensees, which provide regional services while also broadcasting programmes across the network. Since 2016, the fifteen licences are held by two companies, with the majority held by ITV Broadcasting Limited, part of ITV plc.

The network is regulated by the media regulator Ofcom which is responsible for awarding the broadcast licences. The last major review of the Channel 3 franchises was in 1991, with all operators' licences having been renewed between 1999 and 2002 and again from 2014 without a further contest. While this has been the longest period that the ITV network has gone without a major review of its licence holders, Ofcom announced (following consultation) that it would split the Wales and West licence from 1 January 2014, creating a national licence for Wales and joining the newly separated West region to Westcountry Television, to form a new licence for the enlarged South West of England region.

All companies holding a licence were part of the non-profit body ITV Network Limited, which commissioned and scheduled network programming, with compliance previously handled by ITV plc and Channel Television. However, due to amalgamation of several of these companies since the creation of ITV Network Limited (and given Channel Television is now owned by ITV plc), it has been replaced by an affiliation system. Approved by Ofcom, this results in ITV plc commissioning and funding the network schedule, with STV and UTV paying a fee to broadcast it. All licensees have the right to opt out of network programming (except for the national news bulletins), but, unlike the previous system, will receive no fee refund for doing so. Therefore many do not opt out due to pressures from the parent company or because of limited resources. Prior to the affiliate system being introduced, STV would frequently (and sometimes controversially) opt out of several popular network programmes – such as the original run of the first series of Downton Abbey – citing the need to provide more Scottish content to its viewers.

As a public service broadcaster, the ITV network is obliged to broadcast programming of public importance, including news, current affairs, children's and religious programming as well as party election broadcasts on behalf of the major political parties and political events, such as the Budget. The network also needs to produce accessible output containing subtitles, signing and audio description. In exchange for this programming, the ITV network is available on all platforms free to air and can be found at the top of the EPG of all providers.

ITV plc

ITV plc owns thirteen of the fifteen franchises and broadcasts to England, Wales, southern Scotland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands and Northern Ireland through its subsidiary company ITV Broadcasting Limited. The company also owns the breakfast television licence, which as of January 2020, broadcasts across the network between 6:00 and 10:00am each morning using the Good Morning Britain (previously Daybreak) and Lorraine names. The company broadcasts a centralised service under the ITV1 brand. In Northern Ireland, ITV used the UTV brand name as the name of the channel until April 2020.

The group also owns ITV Studios, the production arm of the company and formed from an amalgamation of all the production departments of the regional licences they own. The company produces a large proportion of ITV's networked programming (around 47%, but previously as high as 66% according to some reports), with the rest coming primarily from independent suppliers (under the Broadcasting Act 1990, at least 25% of ITV's total output must be from independent companies). ITV plc hopes to increase the amount of in-house programming to as close to the 75% limit as possible.

The group cut the number of regional news programmes offered from 17 in 2007 to 9 by 2009, resulting several regions being merged to form one programme, including the Border and Tyne Tees regions, the Westcountry and West regions and the removal of sub regional programming, with some regions only represented by pre-recorded segments. Sub-regions were restored in 2013.

STV Group

STV Group plc owns two franchises, covering central and northern Scotland, through subsidiary companies STV Central and STV North, broadcasting a central service under the STV brand.

The company had several disputes with ITV plc in the late 2000s and early 2010s over network programming. STV aimed to broadcast more Scottish programmes at peak times and so removed several key ITV plc programmes from their schedule in July 2009 including The Bill, Midsomer Murders and Lewis. Despite STV's explanation of expense, ITV plc were angered by the decision, as a recent schedule change had made The Bill central to their programming, and broadcast the programmes on ITV3 as well to ensure Scottish viewers could see the programmes. On 23 September ITV plc was reported to be in the process of suing STV for £20 million, as ITV felt dropping the shows constituted a breach of network agreements; STV subsequently counter-sued ITV plc for £35 million.

The dispute was ended in 2011 with STV agreeing to pay ITV plc £18 million. The signing of the new affiliation deal has resulted in STV paying a flat fee for all networked programming, and so to drop any programmes is unlikely due to the large costs involved.

Current licensees

There are fifteen regional licences, covering fourteen regions (there are separate weekday and weekend licences for the London region), and one national licence for the breakfast service. All licences listed here were renewed until the end of 2024. Licences in England and Wales were held by the individual regional ITV plc owned companies prior to November 2008.

The appointment to provide national news for ITV (TV Network) is also subject to approval by Ofcom. This appointment has been held by ITN since the channel's inception, and has also been approved through the end of 2024.

Programming

Despite the immense popularity of ITV programming, following legislation in the Broadcasting Act 1990 imposing a 25% quota for commissioning of independent productions, the number of programmes from independent production companies not connected to the traditional ITV network has increased rapidly. Notable examples include Talkback Thames (one half of which, Thames Television, was itself a former ITV franchisee), producers of The Bill and co-producers of The X Factor, and 2waytraffic, producers of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.

From the late 1990s, ITV's long-standing commitment to strong current affairs and documentary programming began to diminish with the ending of productions such as World in Action (Granada Television), This Week (Rediffusion London/Thames Television), First Tuesday (Yorkshire Television), Network First, Survival (Anglia Television), and Weekend World (LWT) and their replacement with populist shows such as Tonight. News at Ten was also axed in 1999, although it was reinstated in 2001. In December 2009, the final edition of ITV's long-running arts programme, The South Bank Show was broadcast.

ITV's primetime schedules are dominated by its soap operas, such as the flagship Coronation Street and Emmerdale. At the start of the 21st century, ITV faced criticism for including a large amount of "reality TV" programmes in the schedule, such as Celebrity Fit Club, Celebrity Wrestling and Celebrity Love Island. In its defence, ITV does continue to show its major strengths in the fields of sports coverage and drama productions, and it continues to schedule national news in primetime.

Breakfast

Breakfast television programmes have been broadcast on ITV since 1 February 1983. It was initially run by an independent contractor - TV-am, and later GMTV - until GMTV Limited became a wholly owned subsidiary of ITV plc in November 2009.

Historically, ITV aired breakfast programmes from 6am until 9.25am but ITV extended this to 10am on weekdays on 6 January 2020. and now broadcasts two breakfast programmes on weekdays - Good Morning Britain and Lorraine. Good Morning Britain keeps viewers up to date with all the latest news, sports, features and weather, whilst Lorraine predominantly focuses on celebrity interviews, recipes, fashion and showbiz. Until 27th August 2023, the service would show a simulcast of the CITV channel, but since that service has closed, a mix of repeated programming is shown whilst the CITV service that still exist broadcasts at breakfast time on ITV2 (which has the CITV block), ITV3, ITV4 and ITVBe from 7am show other repeats some of which provide a sign language service within the broadcast as part of its quota and licence requirements.

Daytime programming

ITV's strong daytime line-up helped by programmes such as This Morning, Loose Women, Dickinson's Real Deal and game shows Tipping Point and The Chase are very popular, achieving the highest audience share during the daytime slot.

Entertainment

In recent years the network has tried to use formats that ITV Studios own outright (whether they have originated in the UK with their Lifted Entertainment company or have come from production companies they own abroad), though some popular programme formats like The Masked Singer have still been acquired from other companies abroad. Currently ITV are behind the formats for Dancing on Ice, The Voice UK (the format originally coming from their Dutch production company) and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, while forthcoming music game show Walk The Line has been co-developed by Simon Cowell's Syco Entertainment and ITV.

National and international news

Since the network started, Independent Television News Limited (ITN) has held the contract to produce news for the ITV network, with 30-minute national news bulletins currently broadcast at 1:30 pm, and 10:00 pm, and an hour-long bulletin at 6.30pm. These bulletins were broadcast under the ITN brand from 1955 until 1999, when a new network identity reinforced the ITV brand, resulting in the new bulletins being broadcast under the ITV News brand.

ITN has long been respected in the news industry as a source of reliable information and news, and as a result the service has won many awards for their programmes, the latest being in May 2011 when News at Ten was named best news programme by the Royal Television Society and BAFTA.

The ITV National Weather forecast was first broadcast in 1989, using data supplied by the Met Office, and was presented by a number of weather forecasters. The forecasts are sponsored with the sponsor's message appearing before and after the forecast. The forecasts are made immediately after the main national news bulletins.

Prior to the creation of the national forecast, each regional company provided its own regional forecast. The regional forecasts today are incorporated into the main regional news bulletins, and in the summer months, includes a pollen count.

Late-night programming

Currently only new episodes of long-form news and current affairs programmes like Exposure, Peston and On Assignment are being scheduled after News at Ten. The channel broadcasts a partnership teleshopping service overnight, replacing gambling broadcasts: the time between the news and the shopping is usually kept for re-runs, with ITV repeating its primetime entertainment shows, films, or sports programming from ITV4.

Also aired overnight are repeats, many of which have on-screen BSL signing for the deaf community. Replacing the information-based ITV Nightscreen slot in 2021 was Unwind With ITV, programming produced in association with the Campaign Against Living Miserably. This mindfulness programme shows calming shots of natural landscapes and relaxing animations, with versions of the footage also seen on ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4.

On some occasions the schedule is varied, for example a live event overnight, such as the Super Bowl or the Oscars.

This overnight programme service is very different to what used to be shown on the network in the years after 24-hour broadcasting was introduced - this included new entertainment, imports, sports and other information programmes, and, in some regions, a job finder service.

Regional programming

The regional ITV companies are required to provide local news as part of their franchise agreement together with local weather forecasts, with the main local bulletin at 6pm and regional bulletins located after each national news programme. In addition to this, traditionally ITV companies would provide other regional programming based on current affairs, entertainment or drama. However, apart from a monthly political programme, most non-news regional programming in the English regions was dropped by ITV plc in 2009, although it continues in Wales and the Channel Islands, as well as on STV and UTV and ITV Border in Scotland from 2014 to cover mainly Scottish politics whilst ITV Border in England broadcast network programming . On 14 January 2013, ITV plc regional news programmes titles were discontinued in favour of more generic branding under the ITV News title with the region listed as the subheading. However some "heritage" brand names were retained including Calendar, Granada Reports and Lookaround. On 28 June 2014, ITV News Cymru Wales returned to its historic name of Wales at Six.

Anglia: ITV News Anglia (with East and West variations)

Border: ITV News Lookaround (although with a Scotland non-news opt out)

Central: ITV News Central (with East and West variations)

Channel: ITV News Channel TV

Granada: ITV News Granada Reports

London: ITV News London

Meridian: ITV News Meridian (with South variation and a Thames Valley opt-out and South East variation)

STV Central: STV News (non-ITV plc) (with East and West variations)

STV North: STV News (non-ITV plc) (with a Dundee opt-out)

Tyne Tees: ITV News Tyne Tees

Sports

Football

ITV holds joint rights for the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship with the BBC and has shown every World Cup live since 1966, on a shared basis with the BBC. This arrangement has been in place since the 1960s. ITV shares the rights for the FA Cup with the BBC, having previously done so from 1955 to 1988. ITV also held the live rights to the competition from 1998 to 2001 and from 2008 until 2014. The 24/25 season also added the Carabao Cup to its portfolio broadcasting both semi finals with the first leg of one and the second leg of the other and the final sharing the broadcasting rights with Sky Sports.

Horse racing

ITV other flagship sporting coverage is as the exclusive free to air home of British horse racing. ITV's deal, which began on 1 January 2017, encompasses horse racing every Saturday afternoon on ITV or ITV4.

Boxing

ITV Sport has broadcast many boxing matches over the years under the Big Fight Live banner and the sport was a regular fixture on ITV screens until the mid 1990s when ITV lost its two premier contracts to Sky Sports In 2005, ITV returned to the ring when it reached an agreement to broadcast the main share of Frank Warren's Sports Network fights. This continued until 2008, and in 2010 ITV decided to stop covering the sport as ITV thought that boxing was no longer commercially viable. In the late 2010s ITV showed some boxing on a pay-per-view channel ITV Box Office. However ITV's boxing coverage is now restricted to Premier Boxing Champions which it shows on ITV4, having closed ITV Box Office at the start of 2020.

Cycling

ITV has shown the Tour de France in 2002. Initially, live coverage was only broadcast at the weekend but since the 2010 Tour de France, ITV4 has broadcast daily live coverage of every stage. ITV also broadcasts the Tour of Britain Women and Tour of Britain Men live.

Darts

ITV4 covers six tournaments each year, including the UK Open, The Masters and the World Series of Darts. ITV had previously extensively covered the sport and did so from 1972 until it decided to drop the sport in 1988. ITV resumed coverage of darts in 2007 and since then it has gradually increased the number of events it shows.

Children's programming

The network broadcasts children's programming under the CITV (Children's ITV) strand. Children's programming was originally provided during weekday afternoons and weekend mornings, however following the launch of the CITV channel in 2006, all children's programming, with the exception of the weekend ITV Breakfast slot, were relocated from the ITV line-up to the CITV channel in 2007, a move which was challenged by Ofcom in April 2007. In 2023, ITV announced that CITV would cease broadcasting as a linear channel, and would be replaced by ITVX Kids, a streaming media service which launched in July 2023. The CITV channel closed on 1 September 2023, with a dedicated CITV programming block now broadcasting on ITV2 every morning, from 2 September 2023.

Schools programming

Schools programming on the network began in 1957 in some regions and expanded as more regions began broadcasting. It was a contractual obligation for some ITV companies to broadcast schools programming, and this was initially broadcast as part of the normal scheduling. The programmes were moved into a segment for broadcast during the day in the 1960s, under the banner Independent Television for Schools and Colleges and from 1987 were broadcast on Channel 4 in the ITV Schools on Channel 4 segment. In 1993, this segment became Channel 4 Schools and later in 2000 4Learning. These strands of programming consisted of schools programming from all the ITV companies or from independent sources. The schools strand itself is now defunct, with no particular branding segment used.

Acquired programming

ITV was originally very reliant on broadcasting American series, with westerns such as Gunsmoke and Rawhide in particular being considerable successes for the network during its earlier years. Action drama The Fugitive and sci-fi anthology The Twilight Zone were also broadcast by various regions in the early 1960s, with Batman and I Dream of Jeannie shown later on in the decade. Due to the varying schedules of many ITV regions, acquired content was not broadcast by some franchises.

By the 1970s, most ITV regions were airing the likes of Hawaii Five-O, Happy Days, and The Brady Bunch. 1972 also saw the beginning of ITV's daytime programmes at lunchtime, a slot that would become associated with the many Australian soap operas that were broadcast in the newly expanded schedule, including The Sullivans and The Young Doctors. By the 1980s, more were added to the schedule, such as Sons and Daughters and A Country Practice.

In primetime by the 1980s, ITV was broadcasting the likes of Hill Street Blues (which ITV began showing just one week after its debut on NBC in the United States) and L.A. Law. It was also early in the decade when Australian evening soap opera Prisoner: Cell Block H was bought by ITV, and was broadcast after News at Ten.

By 1982, Channel 4 had launched, and despite originally being related to ITV, it competed against its parent network to screen popular American programmes such as St. Elsewhere and Cheers, although the latter did receive a single ITV broadcast as part of a night showcasing Channel 4 programmes. Both Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law had moved from ITV to Channel 4 by the end of their runs.

A heavy emphasis on action, fantasy and science fiction series was also placed by ITV during the 1980s, with The A-Team, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Airwolf being broadcast by the network, as well as the likes of Baywatch and SeaQuest DSV by the 1990s. ITV also picked up a glut of older-skewing CBS dramas through that period, including Murder, She Wrote and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

In February 1989, in tandem with the network launching its national weather forecast, and as part of a new early evening lineup which involved the shortening of Children's ITV, Australian soap Home and Away was acquired by ITV, particularly to compete with the success of rival Australian soap opera Neighbours on BBC One. ITV also broadcast Beverly Hills, 90210 beginning in early 1991, in the same Saturday teatime slot that Baywatch had occupied, although some episodes were broadcast in later time slots. It moved to Sky One beginning with the third season.

Notable programming

AEW Dynamite

AEW Rampage

Motorsport

Shop Direct

Unwind with ITV

Teletext provider

The Public Teletext Licence 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 was provided by ORACLE from 1974 until 1993 and from 1993 to 2010 by Teletext Ltd., whose news, sport and TV listings pages rivalled the BBC's offering, Ceefax on terrestrial and BBC Red Button on digital. Teletext Ltd. also provided digital teletext for the Channel 3 services, as well as the text output for both Channel 4 and S4C under the same licence and Channel 5. However, the licence was revoked by Ofcom on 29 January 2010 for failing to provide news and local non-news information on ITV and there is currently no teletext licence holder for ITV.

Availability outside the UK

ITV (as UTV) is widely available in Ireland, where it is received directly in areas bordering Northern Ireland, or in coastal areas from Wales (as ITV Cymru Wales). Until 2015, it was also carried on cable, when it was replaced by UTV Ireland, which was itself replaced by be3, now Virgin Media Three. ITV programming is also available to Irish viewers on Virgin Media One (including soap operas Emmerdale and Coronation Street). ITV is also available on cable and IPTV in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Since 27 March 2013, it has been offered by the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) to members of HM Forces and their families around the world, replacing the BFBS3 TV channel, which already carried a selection of ITV programmes.

Visual identity

There has never been an identity for ITV as a whole that was adopted uniformly by all broadcasters within the ITV network. Before 1989, each regional company used its own name for identification and the name "ITV" was rarely seen on screen, except for some sub-brands such as ITV Schools, ITV Sport or promos produced for the network, like "Christmas on ITV". In September 1989, a national ITV corporate identity was established, which saw regional brands combined with the national ITV brand, although the balance between regional and national brands varied from company to company, and some companies never used the ITV brand at all. It was not until October 2002 that national ITV-branded continuity was adopted across all the regions in England and Wales (see ITV1), although regional continuity before local programmes continued until November 2006.