The channel was established to provide a fourth television service to the United Kingdom in addition to the television licence – funded BBC's two services and the single commercial broadcasting network, ITV.

For eleven weeks, between August and October 1979, industrial action forced Coronation Street and the whole of the ITV network ( apart from the Channel Islands ) off the air.

Like BBC1, the ITV network was officially broadcast in black and white ( though programmes were actually broadcast in colour as early as July that year for colour transmission testing and adjustment ) at this point so the episode was seen by most in black and white.

The ITV network, like BBC1, began full colour transmissions on 15 November 1969 and it is therefore possible that the first transmitted colour episode is number 928 shown on 17 November.

Aside from Granada, the programme originally appeared on the following stations of the ITV network: Anglia Television, Associated-Rediffusion, Television Wales and the West, Scottish Television, Southern Television and Ulster Television.

As the ITV network grew over the next few years, the programme was transmitted by these new stations on these dates onward: Westward Television from episode 40 on 29 April 1961, Border Television from episode 76 on 1 September 1961, Grampian Television from episode 84 on 30 September 1961, Channel Television from episode 180 on 1 September 1962 and Teledu Cymru ( north and west Wales ) from episode 184 on 14 September 1962.

At this point, the ITV network became complete and the programme was broadcast almost continuously across the country at 19: 30 on Monday and Wednesday for the next twenty-seven years.

In a January 2008 overhaul of the ITV network the Sunday episodes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale were moved out of their slots.

In the 1960s, Britain's commercial television network, ITV, influenced by Canadian producer Sydney Newman produced the science-fiction serials Pathfinders In Space ( 1960 ) and its sequel Pathfinders to Venus ( 1961 ).

The ITV network was compelled to use Band III, meaning that it was at first limited to TV sets with Band III converters which converted the Band III signal to a Band I signal.

The Avengers was produced by ABC Television, a contractor within the ITV network.

It would be three years before Britain's ITV network began full colour broadcasting.

In 1999, the British television network ITV broadcast a censored version with each of the twelve utterances of Nigger deleted.

ATV, as part of the ITV network, would broadcast the show to other ITV stations in the United Kingdom, and its distribution arm, ITC Entertainment, would sell the show in the United States and around the world.

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.

The program, presented by Bamber Gascoigne, produced by Granada Television and broadcast across the ITV network, was very popular and ran until it was taken off the air in 1987.

Timeslip is a British children's science fiction television series made by ATV for the ITV network and broadcast between 1970 and 1971.

ITV is a major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom.

ITV is a network of television channels operating regional television services as well as sharing programmes between each other to be displayed on the entire network.

The first ITV network to launch was London's Associated-Rediffusion on 22 September 1955, with the midlands and North services launching in February 1956 and May 1956 respectively.

Following the 1993 changes, ITV as a network began to consolidate with several companies doing so to save money by ceasing the duplication of services present when they were all separate companies.

ITV is not owned by one company, but rather by a series of regional companies that provide a regional service while also broadcasting programmes across the network.

Examples include the U. S. M901 ITV ( Improved TOW Vehicle ) and the Norwegian NM142, both on an M113 chassis, several Soviet ATGM launchers based on the BRDM reconnaissance car, the British FV438 Swingfire and FV102 Striker and the German Raketenjagdpanzer series built on the chassis of the HS 30 and Marder IFV.

Gerry Anderson made science fiction series for ITV using the puppet based ' Supermarionation ' technique including Fireball XL5 ( 1962 – 63 ), Thunderbirds ( 1965 – 66 ), Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons ( 1967 & 68 ), and Stingray ( 1964 – 65 ) which all retain a following.

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.

In 2001 she played the great-grandmother in the seven-part ITV series Gypsy Girl, based on books by Elizabeth Arnold.

These include Skullion in Porterhouse Blue ( for Channel 4 ), Sidney " Pop " Larkin in the rural idyll The Darling Buds of May ( Yorkshire Television / ITV ) and based on the H. E. Bates novel, which also featured the then unknown Catherine Zeta-Jones.

He subsequently scripted and presented for ATV a six-part television series based on this book and broadcast posthumously by ITV between October and December 1979.

The Broadcasting Act 1990 changed the nature of ITV ; the then regulator the IBA was replaced with a light-touch regulator the ITC, companies now able to purchase other ITV regional companies and franchises were now being awarded based upon a highest-bidder auction, with few safeguards in place.

Gay scenes from Britain's ITV serial drama Coronation Street ( also based in the city ) were filmed around Canal Street.

Since 1996, part of the house's grounds have been used as the Beckindale village in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale, which had been based in two different Yorkshire villages since its inception 24 years earlier.

In 1998 Sermon from St. Albion's, an ITV television series based on the column was shown.

In 1975, he appeared in the ITV children's show The Laughing Policeman, based on the Charles Penrose song and his character from the series.

Previously it was held by Granada Television which was founded by Sidney Bernstein and based at Granada Studios since its inception, and which was the only surviving company out of the original four Independent Television Authority franchisees from 1954 before it merged with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc in 2004.

Following the merger to form ITV West & Westcountry, most of Westcountry's operations were transferred to HTV's West headquarters in Bristol, where the regional news service is now based.

Carlton are to this day based in The London Studios, albeit as part of the ITV plc operations housed there.

It was made by Granada Television ( later ITV Productions for ITV, based on Joop van den Ende's Dutch format, Soundmixshow.

In 1999, LWT was forced to adopt the second ITV generic look, based on the theme of hearts.

The Women's Land Army was the subject of the Angela Huth book Land Girls and a film loosely based on the book, The Land Girls, and also of the 1970s ITV sitcom Backs to the Land.

Terrestrial television coverage based in the area are the BBC who share the radio facilities on Victoria Street and ITV Yorkshire who have a news unit based in Immingham.

Tyne Tees has been based on the Gateshead bank of the River Tyne, just south of the mouth of the River Derwent, North East England | River Derwent, since July 2005. The complex continued until 2004 following the merger of Granada and Carlton to form ITV plc.

A television series based on the character was produced for the British ITV network by Thames Television during the 1970s, and revived in the 1990s.

Yarwood was one of the stars of British television in the 1960s and 1970s, with his own prominent shows, which changed between BBC and ITV ( ATV and Thames Television ) based on high profile financial deals.