| URL | itv.com |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | Yes |
| Type of site | Portal |
| Registration | No |
| Owner | ITV plc |
| Created by | ITV |
| Launched | 31 October 1994 |
itv.com is the main website of ITV plc, the UK's largest commercial television broadcaster which operates 11 out of 15 regions on the ITV network under the ITV1 brand. The website offers on-line streaming, ITV archive, news, sport, entertainment, games, soaps, lifestyle, drama and an interactive TV guide. Each of ITV plc's channels, ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, and CITV have a page with information on their programming. There are also pages for the ITV regions owned by ITV plc, meanwhile the regions not owned by ITV plc each have their own, separate websites.
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The URL 'www.itv.com' was created on 31 October 1994, but was registered elsewhere for some years before Carlton and Granada bought the domain name after merging their respective on-line services carlton.com and G-Wizz. Both companies have since merged to form ITV plc. The original ITV URL was www.itv.co.uk, which now redirects to itv.com. itv.co.uk was and still is registered to the ITV Network Limited as opposed to ITV plc. Previous corporate logos had ".com" added as a logo for the website however this trend stopped with the 2011 redesign where a black ITV logo is used when referring to the website. ITV.com's slogan used to be "total freedom of entertainment".
The new ITV online features media player through which viewers gain access to whole shows, simulcasts, previews and catch-ups of broadcast content, much of it within a 30-day window, all for free for the viewer, funded by advertising. Users also have access to the network's programme archive, 'behind-the-scenes' programming, games and user-generated content. The site will also make available some 1,000 hours of exclusive archive content, which will grow over time. In addition, the site also introduces interactive services and community elements.[1]
Soaps such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale was the first genre to launch on 12 June 2007, followed by Games on 19 June 2007, Drama and Best of ITV on 29 June 2007, Lifestyle on 9 July 2007, Entertainment on 17 July 2007, Sport on 25 July, with every other section launching on 31 July, making the site now fully launched.[2] Also on 12 June 2007 simulcasts of ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 were launched (However not all programming will be shown due to rights restrictions).
In March 2008, the website was revamped with the changes including the homepage and the video player, with a new Catch Up TV section. [3]
On 10 December 2008 it was announced that itv.com would undergo another redesign to introduce more social media features and a greater emphasis on its most popular TV shows with a "fewer, bigger, better" strategy. The re-design was codenamed 'Project Penguin', and followed the announcement of ITV's Catch Up service being re-branded to ITV Player.[4]
Parts of the site have already had a re-design, including a new-look homepage. The Coronation Street, Loose Women and football sections pages were updated in the early months of 2009. This Morning relaunched in August. ITV News will relaunch next year, coinciding with a new Tonight page. On 11 September 2009 video coding was changed from Microsoft Silverlight to Flash, and on 25 September 2009 ITV relaunched its TV classics section. On 19 November ITV Player had a complete overhaul of its site and relaunched with a new website with a few new add-ons, including a search bar, light dimmer and bigger video players. A Brand new TV Shows directory was relaunched on December 10th which then lead to the closure of the old style Drama, Soap, Entertainment pages on the site being replaced with similar pages in the TV Shows directory. On 4 February a brand new weather page launched and on 22 February a brand new ITV News website launched, stories from ITV News correspondents, the latest news programme, news blogs and a meet the team page are all on the brand new website. From Summer 2010, the ITV website underwent another overhaul with tweaks to the layout such as centring pages when used on wide-screen displays as well as improved pages for various ITV shows with high resolution images and videos.
On 4 March 2009, ITV announced that ITV Local would close as a separate business. On 17 March 2009, it did, with the ITV regions integrated into itv.com. The new itv.com/local relaunched during October 2009 and are now prominent in regional news.
On 31 March 2011 ITV.com had another new design. The homepage was completely redesigned as were the channel mini-sites. The TV guide and TV shows sections incorporated the new page headers and footers whilst becoming centred for better presentation on wide screen displays. The news option in the navigational bar offers national and regional news. The sports section also become centred, with a redesigned itv.com/f1 site launching soon after, other sports mini-sites are expected to redesigned in the same way when their respective new seasons begin. Many programmes mini-sites relating to current programmes were centred, whilst shows returning for new series' saw their sites redesigned with high resolution background images and increased interactive and video content. This redesign continues to build upon the social networking functionality introduced in previous versions of the site.
The ITV Player relaunched on Monday 22 August 2011 with a new look and new features. ITV has said there will be upcoming improvements to the ITV Player such as dedicated applications for Android and iOS devices. Currently improvements to the reliability, subtitles on some programmes and a dedicated CITV section have since launched.
ITV has signalled their intention to trial a micro-payments feature on their website. It is currently unclear on what they will charge for but this could include consumers paying for alternative story lines for soaps and archive content. The video archive section of the site, introduced in the 2007 redesign was removed when the redesign went live.
ITV is to relaunch it's news, sport and weather website in March 2012.[5]
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