ITV2

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See ITV2 rumour for fourth British terrestrial television channel rumour from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s.


ITV2
Launched	7 December 1998
Owned by	ITV plc
Audience share	2.0% (0.1% for ITV2+1) (November '06, Source:[1])
Timeshift service	ITV2+1
Website	www.itv.com/itv2
Availability
Terrestrial
Freeview	Channel 6
Satellite
Sky Digital (UK)	Channel 118 Channel 211 (+1)
SES Astra	10758V, 22.0, 5/6 (manual tuning)
Cable
NTL:Telewest	Channel 113/114

ITV2 is a free-to-air entertainment television channel in the United Kingdom owned by ITV plc. It was launched on 7 December 1998, and is available on digital television, via satellite (free-to-air on Sky Digital platform as of 1 November 2005), cable, or terrestrial (Freeview) media. It is also available through analogue cable television. It airs daily from 9.25am following the closedown of GMTV2 on the same frequency.

The channel mainly shows episodes of ITV1 programming at a later time (such as the soap opera Coronation Street), imported American programming such as Judge Judy and extended coverage of Reality television programmes such as The X Factor. However, some original programming has been commissioned for the channel.

In June 2004, ITV announced that they were going to double the channel's programme budget, and would add more US series and movies.

The channel has an on-screen logo at all times during its programming output, which is not removed during advertisement breaks. For images of ITV2 presentation see ITV Idents and Presentation

ITV launched a one hour timeshift channel of ITV2 on Monday, 30 October 2006. The company is looking to its digital channels to shore up revenues as its flagship channel ITV1 suffers a decline in viewers. ITV3+1 launched on the same day.

1 Defunct local variants
- 1.1 S2
- 1.2 UTV2
2 Some programmes shown on ITV2
3 External links

[edit] Defunct local variants

[edit] S2

S2 was a television station broadcast throughout the Scottish and Grampian ITV regions by SMG plc, the holder of the Scottish and Grampian region ITV franchises. S2 - which aired on the Digital Terrestrial platform - was launched April 30, 1999 and closed just over two years later - as part of a deal with ITV Digital - on July 27, 2001

Towards the end of its life, it mainly simulcast ITV2, but covered the ITV2 graphic with an opaque S2 graphic. [2] This caused controversy and forced the broadcaster further into removing the channel. By 2001, it had lost nearly all of its Scottish programmes and found itself simulcasting with ITV2 the vast majority of the time.

Although S2 initially had great ambitions for the station, it closed in 2001 as part of a deal with ITV Digital. [3] The channel capacity was replaced by ITV2 and the ITV Sports Channel. When the sports channel closed, it was replaced by the now also-defunct ITV News Channel.

The Grampian and Scottish franchises operate together as stv as of present (2006).

[edit] UTV2

UTV2 was a television station broadcast by UTV plc on Digital Terrestrial Television in Northern Ireland. It was launched in 1999 as TV You. The programming consisted primarily of simulcasts with the ITV2 station shown in England, Wales and the Scottish Borders, although they did also use archive broadcasts from UTV.

Unusually, for a commercial station, neither UTV2 nor its predecessor carried any advertising. This was presumably due to their failure to attract advertisers to a station which was only receivable by a few thousand viewers.

UTV2 closed on January 22, 2002 following a deal with ITV Digital similar to that which saw S2 replaced by ITV2 in most of Scotland