ITV Digital
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Image:Itv digital logo .png ITV Digital used to be the sole British terrestrial digital television broadcaster. It was launched as ONdigital in 1998, the world's first digital terrestrial television network. It was subsequently rebranded as ITV Digital in July 2001. Its main shareholders were the UK ITV broadcasters Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc (who have since merged to form ITV plc).
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History
Image:Ondigitallogo.PNG Digital terrestial television started in the UK in 1998. Six multiplexes were set up, and three of them were formed from capacity gifted to the existing analogue broadcasters. The other three multiplexes were auctioned off. A consortium of Carlton Television, Granada plc and BSkyB won the auction, and set up ONdigital. BSkyB was later forced to withdraw on competition grounds.
The new digital broadcaster was launched in 1998, with a lineup of 18 channels, including many channels developed in-house by Carlton and Granada. In 2000, internet service ONnet was launched. In the same year, a deal with multiplex operator SDN lead to the launch of pay-per-view service ONrequest.
However, by this point the service was losing money quickly. Aggressive marketing by BSkyB for their own digital service, Sky Digital, lead to a high ONDigital churn rate. In addition, the choice of 64QAM broadcast mode meant that the signal was weak in many areas, and there was much signal piracy. A News Corporation subsidiary, NDS Group, was unsuccesfully sued by [[Canal+]] for cracking and then releasing details of their encryption technology – the same technology used by ONDigital. News Corp is the majority shareholder of BSkyB.
Rebranding
In desperation, Carlton and Granada turned to their most valuable asset - the ITV brand - and rebranded ONdigital as ITV Digital. They also (in a very expensive deal) puchased the TV rights to the Football League and launched the ITV Sports Channel. A massive re-branding campaign was launched to support the new naming, with customers even being sent ITV Digital stickers to place over the existing ONdigital logos on their remote controls and Set Top Boxes. The software running on the receivers was never changed though, and always displayed 'ON' on nearly every screen.
It also had a famous advertising campaign involving the comedian Johnny Vegas and a knitted monkey (voiced by Ben Miller). A replica knitted monkey could be obtained by signing up to ITV Digital. Because the monkey could not be obtained without signing up to the service, a popular market for second-hand monkeys developed. At one time original ITV Digital Monkeys were fetching several hundred pounds on eBay and even knitting patterns delivered by email were sold for several pounds.
Administration & Freeview
However, these changes failed to revive the broadcaster. Indeed, the cost of the Football League deal proved one too many a burden for ITV Digital, and it was placed into administration on 27 March 2002. Most subscription channels ceased broadcasting on ITV Digital on 1 May 2002. The collapse caused severe financial difficulties for lower-division football clubs who had budgeted for large incomes from the television contract.
A consortium made up of the BBC, BSkyB and Crown Castle International was granted ITV Digital's old broadcasting license, and launched the Freeview service on October 30 2002, offering 30 free-to-air TV channels and 20 free-to-air radio channels including several interactive channels such as BBCi and Teletext but no subscription or premium services. Those followed on March 31, 2004 when Top Up TV began broadcasting eleven pay TV channels in timeshared broadcast slots. During 2002, ITV Digital's liquidators started to ask customers to return set top boxes. This threatened to undermine the fledgling Freeview service as most digital terrestrial receivers were former ONdigital and ITV Digital units. ITV Digital eventually relented and the receivers were written off by the administrators.
The three multiplexes that were run by ITV Digital remained blank until a week or so before Freeview's launch. However, E4 and FilmFour continued broadcasting for over two weeks after the shutdown. Strangely however, E4 carried subtitles until the placeholder was deleted in September 2002. Most of the original ITV Digital placeholders and LCN's were kept until Freeview's replaced them, leaving large gaps between channels.
Ironically ITV Digital operated out of Marco Polo House, the south London building that had once housed the lavish headquarters of the ill-fated British Satellite Broadcasting.
ITV Digital Channel List
- ITV Sports Channel
- Sky Sports 1
- Sky Sports 2
- Sky Sports 3
- Sky MovieMax
- Sky Premier
- Sky One
- Cartoon Network
- Carlton Cinema
- British Eurosport
- Granada Plus
- Men & Motors
- UK Gold
- MTV
- Discovery Channel
- Play UK
- UK Style
- Nickelodeon/Paramount Comedy
- FilmFour
- E4
- UK Horizons
Carlton/Granada Digital Television Channels
Carlton and Granada, the owners of ON/ITV Digital created a selection of channels, which formed some of the core content of channels available via the service, these were:
- Carlton Cinema [Ceased Transmission 2003]
- Carlton Kids [Ceased Transmission 2000]
- Carlton World [Ceased Transmission 2000]
- Carlton Select [Ceased Transmission 2000]
- Carlton Food Network (Rebranded TASTE CFN) [Ceased Transmission 2001]
- On Sport 1 [Ceased Transmission 2001]
- On Sport 2 [Ceased Transmission 2001]
- Granada Good Life (Rebranded Granada Breeze) [Ceased Transmission 2002]
- Granada Men and Motors (Rebranded Men and Motors) [Still Broadcasting]
- Granada Plus (Rebranded Plus) [Ceased Transmission 2004] [Channel's demographic fulfilled by ITV3]
- FirstOnDigital [Ceased Transmission 2000]
- Wellbeing (Granada & Boots) [Ceased Transmission 2002]
- Shop! (Granada and Littlewoods) [Ceased Transmission 2002]
- On Request/ITV Select [Ceased Transmission 2002]
- ITV Sport Channel [Ceased Transmission 2002]
- ITV Sport Extra [Ceased Transmission 2002]
- ITV Sport Select [Ceased Transmission 2002]
Timeline of events
- 1997
- 1998
- 29 July 1998 - BDB rebrand as ONdigital
- 15 November 1998 - Formal broadcasting begins
- 2000
- 1 May 2000 - Formal broadcasting of Pay-per-view (PPV) service ONrequest begins
- 2001
- 11 July 2001 - ONdigital rebrand as ITV Digital
- 22 August 2001 - PPV service ONrequest rebrands as ITV Select
- 2002
- 27 March 2002 - Placed into administration
- 1 May 2002 - Pay-TV operations cease
- 30 October 2002 - Formal broadcasting of replacement Freeview service begins
See also
External links
- ONdigital in liquidation, Information for subscribers.
- ONdigital history site
- ITV Digital goes broke
- Set-top box offers low-cost digital
- List of channels offered by ONDigital
- ITV Digital TV Commercials featuring Al and Monkey
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