Before Channel 4 and S4C, Britain had three terrestrial television services: BBC1, BBC2, and ITV.

The notion of a second commercial broadcaster in the United Kingdom had been around since the inception of ITV in 1954 and its subsequent launch in 1955 ; the idea of an ' ITV2 ' was long expected and pushed for.

Indeed television sets sold throughout the 1970s and early 1980s had a spare channel called ' ITV / IBA 2 '.

ITV then confirmed to the Mail that a second version had been recorded in the 1970s, but was only used for a very short while before reverting to Hunt's 1960 recording.

The high transmission tower was re-sited from London, where it had been used for early ITV transmissions.

ITV introduced General Hospital, which later transferred to a prime time slot, and Scottish Television had Take the High Road, which lasted for over twenty years.

A remake miniseries, in the works since 2005, premiered on 15 November 2009 on American cable TV channel AMC, made in cooperation with British broadcaster ITV after AMCs original production partner Sky1 had pulled out.

It was recently discovered that the original copy had been wiped, which is unusual as the wiping of archive material at ITV is usually thought to have stopped around 1977.

The commercial station ITV had popular successes with Rising Damp ( 1974 – 78, sometimes called the best of all ITV sitcoms ), Man About the House ( 1973 – 76 ) and George and Mildred ( 1976 – 79 ).

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.

The Football League sued ITV Digital's parent companies, Carlton and Granada, claiming that the firms had breached their contract in failing to deliver the guaranteed income.

Carlton and Granada stepped in and paid £ 2. 8m to have the boxes stay with their customers, as at the time the ITV companies received a discount on their licence payments based on the number of digital homes they had converted.

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.

DNAYS had a very successful run on ITV and ended in 1969.

The name was a parody of London Weekend Television, the independent television franchise that provided Londoners with their ITV services at weekends ; Rutland had been England's smallest county, but had recently been ' abolished ' in an administrative shake-up.

By 2004, ITV was owned by five companies of which two, Carlton and Granada had become major players by owning between the two all the franchises in England, Wales, the Scottish borders and the Isle of Man.

Each ITV region originally had its own studios, however the rise of publisher-broadcasters like Carlton Television | Carlton and the takeover of regions caused several studios to be closed.

The company has had several disputes with ITV plc in recent years over network programming.

Despite STV's explanation of expense, ITV plc were angered by the decision, as a recent schedule change had made The Bill central to their programming, and broadcast the programmes on ITV3 as well to ensure Scottish viewers could see the programmes.

It was reported by BBC News and ITV Channel Television on 17 May 2008 that the tenants had put the remaining 40 years of their lease up for sale, with an asking price of £ 15, 000, 000.

At the turn of the decade Eric Sykes and his old friend and colleague Hattie Jacques co-starred in a new 30-minute BBC TV sitcom, Sykes and A ..., which Sykes created in collaboration with writer Johnny Speight, who had worked with him earlier in the 1950s on the two Tony Hancock series for ITV.

* It emerged in September 2010 that more than 60 recordings of BBC and ITV drama productions originally sent for broadcast in the United States by the PBS station WNET in New Jersey had been found at the Library of Congress.

ITV already owned some of SDN due to the consolidation of the ITV industry: Granada bought UNM's stake in SDN, and this was then incorporated into the united ITV plc.

The populous area of Wales in the South were already being served by TWW, which had begun broadcasting in 1958, while the north-east of the country and much of the north coast was served by the North of England franchise, Granada and ABC, operating since 1956 ; the interior of north Wales could not receive ITV transmissions at all.

In 2012 the BBC out bid ITV for show The Voice UK that already had made a stamp in other countries.

In Britain ( where cable television, although already having a notable number of subscribers, had not yet developed as much as in Central and Northern Europe ), market research gave it a 13 % audience share in cable homes, surpassing both BBC2 and Channel 4 in those homes, with its children's programming ( the station's then most successful field ) increasing to a share of 22. 4 % ( similar to the programmes seen on both Children's BBC and Children's ITV ) ( although in more recent years Sky1's popularity has fallen and the current viewing shares are below 1 %).

In December 2005 it was confirmed that the channel would close down in 2006, in order to use its Freeview bandwidth ( which was already timeshared with ITV4 ) to launch the CITV channel based on the existing CITV brand, and to use its funding to boost ITV News coverage on the main ITV Network.

Atkinson was already working as a pundit for ITV Sport and after leaving management he continued in this role.

Within six months the Company express there concerns, that the government must allow ITV firms the commercial freedom already granted to the BBC to expand their businesses abroad.

The rival ITV station Granada Television had already begun providing regional news coverage when it first went on air in May 1956, at first covering the North West only before extending to Yorkshire six months later.

TV3 Ireland and its sister channel 3e already hold carriage agreement to air certain ITV content within the Republic of Ireland, alternatively UTV is available within the Republic.

While ITV franchise Thames TV wanted to propose Interceptor for another ITV network commission in 1990, Thames was already responsible for a very large section of ITV's prime-time shows and other companies wanted a greater proportion.

On ITV News at Ten that evening, the footage had already been rearranged to show the later attacks on the police lines as before the earlier police containment and horse charges ; and Tommy Sheridan of The Fed / Militant Tendency condemned the protesters.

TV3 Ireland and its sister channel 3e already hold carriage agreement to air certain ITV content within the Republic of Ireland, alternatively UTV is available within the Republic.

Speaking of the decision to axe the teatime editions Tony Woods, the head of continuing drama at ITV stated " The series has already established itself as cult viewing for young adults and repositioning it with a first showing in the evening will build on its appeal ".

ITV's midweek racing coverage had already been on Channel 4 since 22 March 1984 ; from 5 October 1985 the Saturday afternoon coverage also moved to the fourth channel, permanently becoming Channel 4 Racing, although it was reduced in scope considerably at the start of 1986, and would not become as extensive as it was in the ITV era until the late 1990s.

Like Channel 4, S4C does not produce programmes of its own ; instead, it commissions programmes from BBC Cymru and independent producers ( although the quantity purchased from ITV Wales has greatly reduced since the early years of S4C ), and it has particularly developed a reputation for commissioning cartoons, such as SuperTed, Sam Tân ( which became Fireman Sam in its English version on the BBC ) and Shakespeare: The Animated Tales.

Davies and Red's founder Nicola Shindler took the project to the BBC, who quickly turned it down ; it found a home on ITV, a channel that had gained a reputation for producing mainstream, unchallenging, " middle-of-the-road " drama in recent years.

Along with This Week, Weekend World, TV Eye, First Tuesday, The Big Story and The Cook Report-and the news-gathering of ITN-World in Action gave ITV a reputation for quality broadcast journalism to rival the BBC's output.

He enhanced his reputation on two series with former Goon Michael Bentine: After Hours ( ITV, 1958 – 59 ) and It's a Square World ( BBC, 1960 – 64 ).

Although ITV had covered League football before, the launch of The Big Match in 1968 began to garner the network a reputation as a respected alternative to the BBC.

It had a reputation for scheduling to suit its own requirements, and would often broadcast particular shows at different times to the other ITV regions or even opt-out of network activity completely.