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itv.com is the main website of
ITV plc ITV plc is a British media company that holds 13 of the 15 regional television licences that make up the ITV network (Channel 3), the oldest and largest commercial terrestrial television network in the United Kingdom. ITV plc is listed on th ...
, the UK's largest commercial
television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
broadcaster which operates 13 out of 15 regions on the ITV network under the ITV brand (or the UTV brand in Northern Ireland). The website offers online streaming, the ITV archive, news, sport, entertainment, soaps, lifestyle, drama and an interactive TV guide. Each of ITV plc's channels, ITV,
ITV2 ITV2 is a British free-to-air television channel owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc. It was launched on 7 December 1998. For a number of years, it had the largest audience share after the five analogue terrestrial stations, ...
,
ITV3 ITV3 is a British free-to-air television channel owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc. The channel was first launched on Monday 1 November 2004 at 9pm, replacing Plus (Granada). ITV3 is the sixth-largest UK television channel ...
,
ITV4 ITV4 is a British free-to-air television channel which was launched on 1 November 2005. It is owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc, and is part of the ITV network. The channel has a line-up that consists of sports, cult clas ...
, and
CITV CITV (short for Children's ITV, also known as the CITV Channel) is a British free-to-air children's television channel owned by ITV plc. It broadcasts content from the CITV archive and acquisitions, every day from 6 am to 9 pm which ...
has a page with information on its programming. There are also pages for the ITV regions owned by
ITV plc ITV plc is a British media company that holds 13 of the 15 regional television licences that make up the ITV network (Channel 3), the oldest and largest commercial terrestrial television network in the United Kingdom. ITV plc is listed on th ...
. STV Central & STV North, the only regions not owned by ITV plc, have their own separate website at
stv.tv STV is a Scottish free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the STV Group. It is made up of the Central Scotland and Northern Scotland Channel 3 public broadcaster licences, formerly known as Scottish Television (n ...
.


History

The URL 'www.itv.com' was created on 31 October 1994, but it was registered elsewhere for some years before Carlton and
Granada Granada (,, DIN: ; grc, Ἐλιβύργη, Elibýrgē; la, Illiberis or . ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the c ...
bought the domain name after merging their respective online services, carlton.com and G-Wizz. These 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 Web site. However, this trend stopped with the 2011 redesign wherein a black ITV logo began being used when referring to the Web site. ITV.com's slogan used to be "total freedom of entertainment".


Overview


2007 redesign and video on demand

The 2007 redesign of the website featured a media player through which viewers gain access to whole shows, simulcasts, previews and catchups 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 User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...
. The site also makes 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. Soaps such as ''Coronation Street'' and ''Emmerdale'' were 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. Also on 12 June 2007 simulcasts of ITV, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 were launched. (However, not all programming will be shown due to rights restrictions.) In March 2008, the Web site was revamped with changes including the home page and the video player, with a new Catch Up TV section.


2009–10 redesign

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 redesign was code named 'Project Penguin', and it followed the announcement of ITV's Catch Up service being rebranded to ITV Player. Parts of the site have already had a redesign, including a new look for the home page. The ''Coronation Street'', ''Loose Women'' and football sections pages were updated in the early months of 2009. ''This Morning'' was relaunched in August.
ITV News ITV News is the branding of news programmes on the British television network ITV. ITV has a long tradition of television news. Independent Television News (ITN) was founded to provide news bulletins for the network in 1955, and has since con ...
was relaunched 2010, coinciding with a new ''
Tonight Tonight may refer to: Television * ''Tonight'' (1957 TV programme), a 1957–1965 British current events television programme hosted by Cliff Michelmore that was broadcast on BBC * ''Tonight'' (1975 TV programme), a 1975–1979 British current ...
'' 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 Web site with a few new addons, including a search bar, a light dimmer and bigger video players. A ''Brand New TV Shows'' directory was relaunched on 10 December, which then led to 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 Web site launched. Stories from ITV News correspondents, the latest news programme, news blogs and a meet the team page are all on the brand new Web site. From Summer 2010, the ITV Web site 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.


Integration of ITV Local

On 4 March 2009, ITV announced that
ITV Local ITV Local was a broadband TV service provided by UK commercial public service broadcaster ITV plc, the contractor and provider of ITV in 11 of the 15 television regions. First established in 2005, the website provided local news, weather and feat ...
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.


2011 design

On 31 March 2011 ITV.com had another new design. The home page was completely redesigned, as were the channel minisites. 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 thereafter. Other sports minisites are expected to redesigned in the same way when their respective new seasons begin. Many programmes minisites 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 CITV (short for Children's ITV, also known as the CITV Channel) is a British free-to-air children's television channel owned by ITV plc. It broadcasts content from the CITV archive and acquisitions, every day from 6 am to 9 pm which ...
section have since launched. ITV has signalled their intention to trial a micro-payments feature on their Web site. It is currently unclear 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.


2012 news, sport and weather relaunch

ITV relaunched its
news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to event ...
website in March 2012, including the sport and weather pages.


2013 rebrand

As ITV underwent a corporate rebrand in January 2013, the ITV.com website was redesigned to complement the new look.


ITV Mobile

''ITV Mobile'' is an entertainment portal that offers catch-ups and clips from ITV's soaps: ''
Coronation Street ''Coronation Street'' is an English soap opera created by Granada Television and shown on ITV since 9 December 1960. The programme centres around a cobbled, terraced street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner-city Salford. Orig ...
'' and ''
Emmerdale ''Emmerdale'' (known as ''Emmerdale Farm'' until 1989) is a British soap opera that is broadcast on ITV1. The show is set in Emmerdale (known as Beckindale until 1994), a fictional village in the Yorkshire Dales. Created by Kevin Laffan, ...
'',
ITV Sport ITV Sport is a sport producer for ITV. It was formed following the merger between Granada Sport and Central Sport.This Morning'' and ''
The X Factor ''The X Factor'' is a television music competition franchise created by British producer Simon Cowell and his company Syco Entertainment. It originated in the United Kingdom, where it was devised as a replacement for '' Pop Idol'' (2001–2003 ...
''. It also provides the latest information for regional weather forecasts. In 2006, ITV began streaming ITV to customers of 3 in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
. The service was priced at 99p per day's viewing of ITV, with a £5 per month for an 18 channel unlimited viewing TV pack. The service also was broadcast alongside other PSB channels on the short lived BT Movio service, which used the DAB network in the UK to transmit video channels. The streaming of ITV on mobile was introduced on
Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vod ...
and Orange in 2007. iOS users can also stream ITV and ITV2 to their devices via the ITV Mobile site.


NewsFix

From 2007, ITN and ITV Mobile have produced an
ITV News ITV News is the branding of news programmes on the British television network ITV. ITV has a long tradition of television news. Independent Television News (ITN) was founded to provide news bulletins for the network in 1955, and has since con ...
video service. Bulletins were sent to mobiles twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, two bulletins at the weekend. The service previously charged users £2, but since October 2007, it is now free. Users can unsubscribe at any time.


See also

*
stv.tv STV is a Scottish free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the STV Group. It is made up of the Central Scotland and Northern Scotland Channel 3 public broadcaster licences, formerly known as Scottish Television (n ...
- STV website, serving Central and Northern Scotland


References


External links

* * {{ITV ITV (TV network) British entertainment websites Television websites Mobile content