The first system, ITV Digital, went into liquidation in 2002.

ITV Digital was a British digital terrestrial television broadcaster, which launched a pay-TV service on the world's first digital terrestrial television network.

Started as ONdigital in 1998, the network was briefly re-branded as ITV Digital in July 2001, before the service ceased in May 2002.

Canal + brought a lawsuit against News Corporation alleging that they, with the help of NDS, had been working on breaking the MediaGuard smartcards used by Canal +, ITV Digital and other non-Murdoch-owned TV companies throughout Europe.

In desperation at the churn rate, Carlton and Granada turned to their most valuable asset-the ITV brand-and on 11 July 2001 rebranded ONdigital as ITV Digital.

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.

SMG and UTV initially refused to carry the advertising campaign for ITV Digital and did not allow the ITV Sports Channel space on their multiplex, meaning that it was not available at launch in most of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The case was resolved in Scotland, and the Channel Islands and later still in Northern Ireland, allowing the ITV Sport Channel to launch in the non-Carlton and Granada regions ( although it was never made available in the Channel Islands, as the islands do not have DTT or Cable and it never appeared on Sky Digital ).

ITV Digital also ran 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.

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.

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, after the League refused to accept a £ 130m pay cut in its £ 315m deal with the ITV Sport Channel.

Most subscription channels ceased broadcasting on ITV Digital on 1 May 2002.

The League then filed a negligence claim against its lawyers for failing to press for a written guarantee at the time of the deal with ITV Digital.

Had the move been successful, this could have threatened to undermine the fledgling Freeview service, since at the time most digital terrestrial receivers were former ONdigital and ITV Digital units.

Following the administration in 2002, the three multiplexes that were run by ITV Digital remained blank until a week or so before Freeview's launch.

Most of the original ITV Digital channel placeholders and Logical Channel Numbers were kept until Freeview's replaced them, leaving large gaps between channels.

ITV Digital operated out of Marco Polo House, the south London building home to shopping channel QVC and which had once housed The Observer newspaper, but perhaps most famous as the lavish headquarters of the ill-fated British Satellite Broadcasting.

ITV Digital had call centres located in Pembroke Dock, Plymouth and used outsourced BT call centres in Cork, Republic of Ireland and Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Freeview officially launched on 30 October 2002 at 5 am when the BBC and Crown Castle ( now Arqiva ) officially took over the digital terrestrial television ( DTT ) licences to broadcast on the three multiplexes from the defunct ITV Digital ( originally called ONdigital ).

The name distinguishes the service from cable, Sky Digital and the former ITV Digital, digital TV services.

When ITV did return, its first evening schedule included a special " catch-up " edition of Coronation Street, in which storylines which would have taken place during the strike were explained away in the form of a narrative chat between Len Fairclough and Bet Lynch.

Rediffusion did not use the play ; instead, it was made as one of the first productions of the new ITV company Yorkshire Television, and broadcast posthumously on 26 August 1968.

Syndication did not exist as such in Britain until the arrival of satellite, cable and later, from 1998 on, digital television, although it could be argued that many ITV programs up to the early 1990s, particularly imported programming was syndicated in the sense that each ITV region bought in some programs independently of the ITV Network, and in particular many programs out of prime time made by smaller ITV stations were " part-networked " where some regions would show them and others would not.

The rebrand was not without controversy as SMG plc ( owner of Scottish Television and Grampian Television ), UTV and Channel Television all pointed out that the ITV brand did not belong solely to Carlton and Granada.

Despite Barker's success on ITV, LWT's programme controller Stella Richman opted to fire Frost's company Paradine and as Barker was contracted to the company rather than the network, he lost his job, as did Corbett.

Python found surprising popularity in the United States in the 1970s, as did the less cerebral humour of Benny Hill and his ITV sketch series The Benny Hill Show.

On 6 December 2006, NTL announced that it had complained to the Office of Fair Trading about BSkyB's move, and that it would withdraw its attempt to buy ITV plc, stating that it did not believe that it could currently make a deal on favourable terms.

TWW did not produce many programmes for the ITV network, but its news and local programming was well regarded ( it won many plaudits for its sensitive coverage of the Aberfan Disaster ).

This added complexity did little to halt declining viewer figures, and after ITV regions started to drop the programme altogether ( the final season was not screened at all by LWT ) it was taken off the air in 1987.

Although Channel made little for the ITV network, they did contribute to a number of roadshow and anthology series which were collaboratively produced in a number of the smaller TV regions.

Over a period of time, most ITV regions did, with Granada Television and Southern Television being the last in 1979.

Their leading scriptwriter, Eddie Braben, did not initially move to ITV with them, and with Eric Morecambe's failing health, the shows never repeated the audiences they once had.

Unlike the other English and Welsh franchises, ITV London did not receive regional idents featuring the London name until the 2003 refresh ; only one of these idents was ever used at a single junction from launch.

Neither did it neglect other responsibilities: it established the long-running Sunday lunchtime political series Weekend World and ITV's most famous arts programmes Aquarius, and its replacement The South Bank Show ( cancelled by ITV after 30 years ).

* Note: Southern's coverage area coincided only partly with that of the present-day South East England government region, as it did not include the Oxford transmitter region ( Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire ), which was instead covered by the ITV Midlands licensee.

Writing in the Dictionary of National Biography, the philosopher Mary Warnock opined, " Even if her campaigning did not succeed in ‘ cleaning up TV ’, still less in making it more fit to watch in other ways, she was of serious intent, and was an influence for good at a crucial stage in the development both of the BBC and of ITV.

Although, the exact pattern of episodes shown a week varied over the course of Channel 5's run, episodes were typically shown roughly five times a week in a 04: 40 slot ( the run did briefly move to a late night slot, with varying times but typically around 23: 30, but this soon reverted back to the 04: 40 slot, reportedly after complaints from ITV that it clashed with their own various runs of later episodes on assorted regions .).

McGowan found work as a stand-up comedian, and did some of the voices for the ITV television series Spitting Image.

Yorkshire-Tyne Tees were repeatedly warned over worsening standards at the Newcastle-based station and at one point the Independent Television Commission ( the then-governing body of ITV ) threatened to revoke the Tyne Tees licence if the situation did not improve.

The system has been tested for use on the Humvee and the Improved TOW Vehicle ( ITV ).

However, since the amalgamation of companies since the creation of ITV Network Ltd., and since that Channel Television is now owned by ITV plc, it has been replaced by an affiliation system.

This system, approved by Ofcom, results in ITV plc commissioning and funding the network schedule, with STV and UTV paying a fee to broadcast it.

By the early to mid-1980s and like much of ITV, STV had dispensed with 16 mm film and embraced electronic news gathering, with Sony's Betacam being the chosen system. Scottish Television's Cowcaddens HQ, 1987

ITV repeatedly broadcast a short drama called Granny Gets The Point, starring Doris Hare of ' On The Buses ' fame ; where an elderly woman who does not understand the new system is taught to use it by her grandson.

It was created to replace a previous system, where the BBC and ITV companies compiled their own ratings, JICTAR.

Previously programmes were encrypted by MediaGuard SECA2, a more secure version of the encryption system of previous digital terrestrial incumbent ITV Digital.

When built it transmitted BBC Television on the VHF 405-line system ; the Croydon transmitter two miles away had been built some months earlier to broadcast ITV.

In early 2006 Talbot presented a regional series for ITV Granada called Locks and Quays which explored the canal system of North West England.

However, the choice of 64QAM broadcast mode, the fact that at least 40 % of homes would need new aerials to receive it, a high churn rate, an insecure hackable encryption system, the cost of having to provide free set-top boxes, and aggressive competition from BSkyB all contributed to ITV Digital's spiraling costs, before shareholders Granada and Carlton called a halt to the venture.

The college also serves numerous other sites through ' ITV ' distance learning system.

It was originally broadcast on ITV as the fourth in an untitled series of works by Leland, all loosely based around the British educational system.