ITV2

Prior to the launch of Channel 4 in 1982, the name "ITV2" had sometimes been used to refer informally to an envisioned second commercial network in the UK. However, the name resurfaced in the late 1990s for very different reasons. The launch of digital terrestrial television services in the UK saw each existing analogue terrestrial broadcaster given a slice of bandwidth with which to carry their existing service after analogue switch-off with space left over for new channels. Whilst strictly speaking this space belonged to each regional contractor for use within their own region, ITV had undergone a series of buy-outs earlier on in the decade; the three players operating the majority of the network, Granada, Carlton, and United News & Media, jointly launched ITV2 in 1998 to be broadcast to most of the country as a uniform service. Whilst free-to-air, it was marketed alongside their own subscription based ONdigital platform. Other ITV licensees, SMG, UTV and GMTV launched their own services in the space (see below).

ITV2 launched at 7:00pm on 7 December 1998. The first programme was an hour-long introductory programme called It Takes Two presented by Gabby Logan and Vinnie Jones. Billie Piper was heavily involved in the channel's promotion at launch, with an updated version of the 1966 song It Takes Two sung by her used as the theme song for the launch programme and featured in the original promos for the channel.

While ITV2 is now an entertainment channel aimed to a younger audience, at its launch in 1998 it was a mixed genre channel and featured some programmes aimed at much older audiences than what the channel broadcasts currently.

Much of the original content in its launch schedule was current affairs related programming fronted by ITV newscasters. Katie Derham presented a weekly media analysis programme called Wide Angle, John Suchet fronted a weekly current affairs discussion programme called Who, What, Why, and Trevor McDonald presented an interview series, Trevor McDonald Meets....[3] These three programmes all ran on Sunday nights.

There was repeats of popular ITV programmes including Midsomer Murders, Inspector Morse, A Touch of Frost, Heartbeat, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Gladiators, Don't Try This at Home, Trisha and My Wonderful Life, American acquisitions such as Judge Judy, The Jerry Springer Show, The Late Show with David Letterman and Maggie Winters, omnibus editions of ITV soaps Emmerdale, Coronation Street, The Bill and Home and Away and a Saturday football results service called Football First, which was promoted to ITV1 in 2001 (whilst maintaning an ITV2 slot) and rebranded as The Goal Rush.[4] Other launch programmes included youth magazine show Bedrock and Soap Fever which taken a look at the UK's major television soap operas. There was also live coverage of the UEFA Champions League among a range of other sports coverage and a CITV block was featured.

Many of the older skewing drama series were dropped after the launch of ITV3 in 2004, and the launch of ITV4 the year later saw ITV2 ditch sports coverage except on certain occasions as overspill.

In June 2004, ITV plc announced that they were going to double the channel's programme budget, and would add more American series and movies. On 1 November 2004, in an attempt to launch ITV3 on Sky, ITV2 moved from 175 to 118 on Sky after ITV plc bought GSkyB for £10 million. As a result, Plus was permanently closed down, with its EPG slot taken by ITV3.

On 10 October 2006, ITV announced the launch of a one-hour timeshift service of ITV2, ITV2+1. The channel launched on 30 October 2006.[5]

ITV2 and its one-hour timeshift channel began broadcasting 24 hours a day on 17 March 2008. The hours formerly held by GMTV2 were moved to ITV4.[6]

From 11 January 2011, ITV2 +1 on the Freeview platform has changed its broadcasting hours to 7:00 pm until 4:00 am On 1 June 2011, an additional hour was added in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland, allowing ITV2 +1 to start at 6:00 pm On 2 August 2011, ITV2 +1 began to broadcast 24 hours a day on Freeview across the UK, using an eleventh stream created on mux A.

As part of the changes, ITV2 +1 swapped slots on Sky's electronic programme guide with Men & Motors, resulting in the timeshift channel making a significant jump from channel 184 to 131. It is now Sky 218.

GMTV2 programming moved from ITV2 to ITV4. The strand continued to be simulcast on the CITV channel.

On 20 August 2008, ITV2 unveiled a new look. The logo was given a 3D look, with six new idents.

ITV2 was launched on UPC Ireland in the Republic of Ireland on 4 January 2010, marking the first time the channel has been officially available in the country. The channel had already been (and remains) available to Irish viewers on free-to-air satellite for some time, however it is still not listed in the Sky electronic programme guide. On 1 April 2011, ITV2 was removed from UPC Ireland along with ITV3 and ITV4 due to the expiry of a carriage agreement between UPC and ITV.[7] UPC Ireland claim that ITV is not in a position to renegotiate the deal because ITV had struck a deal with another channel provider to provide it with exclusive rights to air certain content from the channels. Conversely, UPC Ireland also claims to have been in discussions right up to the last moment to continue broadcasting the channels.[8] ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 were restored to the UPC Ireland line-up on 20 December 2011. Virgin Media One and its sister channel Virgin Media Two already hold carriage agreement to air certain ITV content within the Republic of Ireland, alternatively UTV is available within the Republic. ITV2 is available along with ITV3 and ITV4 within Switzerland, all three channels are available on SwisscomTV and UPC Cablecom.[9] ITV2 is registered to broadcast within the European Union/EEA through ALIA in Luxembourg.[10][11]

ITV2 was made available on Freeview in the Channel Islands on 29 February 2012, a few months after ITV plc bought Channel Television from Yattendon Group plc.[12]

In November 2021, the channel moved into the true-crime genre with The Social Media Murders, a three-part documentary series with a different case examined every night, over three days.[13][14][15] A second series debuted on ITVX in March 2023 with repeats on ITV1.

In March 2022, ITV announced that their new reality game show Loaded in Paradise, which sees teams in Greece trying to win a chance of spending the prize pot of 50,000 euros, and Tell Me Everything, a mental health themed drama series, would be two of the first ITV2 shows to debut on their new streaming service ITVX before getting terrestrial slots, which eventually came in April 2023 and June 2023 respectively.[16][17][18][19]

In June 2022, ITV2 picked up a number of American series for daytimes[20][21] including re-runs of One Tree Hill,[22] Hart of Dixie[23] and The O.C.[24] as well as the sports drama All American, which had replaced Bob's Burgers in its timeslot. However, All American was unsuccessful in its 7pm slot and so after a month of consistently low ratings, it was moved mid-season to around 2am each morning, with Bob's Burgers returning on 4 July 2022.[25][26] Despite this incident, in January 2023, ITV2 would later stop airing Bob's Burgers altogether and replace it with Superstore, a programme which ITV2 used to air until September 2022 when it got replaced by Secret Crush. After another 3 months of low ratings, this decision was eventually reversed, and Bob's Burgers returned to ITV2 for a second time in April 2023.

In August 2022, the channel axed its Katherine Ryan presented dating show Ready To Mingle[27] after some episodes in the first series received ratings as low as 60,000 viewers, and picked up the rights to the Big Brother format, launching a teaser trailer for its return to British TV during the Love Island final.[28][29][30]

On 7 October 2022, the ITV2 Twitter and YouTube accounts were replaced by ITVX accounts in order to streamline the ITV channels for an upcoming rebrand. This came into place on 15 November 2022.[31]

CITV logo, still used for the ITV2 block

In March 2023, it was announced that ITV would be closing its children's channel CITV after 17 years (and 40 years as a strand on ITV1) later in the year and moving its content to ITVX. In addition to this, it was also announced that some children's programmes would be shown on ITV2 during an early morning slot.[32][33] The block launched on 2 September 2023 following the CITV Channel's closure and runs between 5:00 and 9:00 retaining the channel's branding.

The following is a list of the six most watched shows on ITV2, based on Live +28 data supplied by BARB up to 10 January 2019.[34]

Before Love Island's successful return, the highest rated show on the channel was episode 7.01 of Celebrity Juice, starring Phillip Schofield, on 9 February 2012.[35]

ITV2 won Channel of the Year at the Broadcast Digital Awards in 2007[36] and again in 2013.[37] It was also named Non-Terrestrial Channel of the Year at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2007.[38]

In 2014, the channel was subject to a controversy about one of its shows. Dapper Laughs: On the Pull was created by Vine comedian Daniel "Dapper Laughs" O'Reilly. The show was criticized for promoting violence against women[39] and dubbed by one paper as "a rapist's almanac". Due to these criticisms, an online petition for the show's cancellation reaching 68,210 signatures[40] and a sexist joke glorifying rape said by O'Reilly during one of his live shows,[41] ITV chose not to commission a second series. A subsequent live tour was also cancelled.[42][43] In the wake of the scandal, Stewart Lee criticized O'Reilly's Newsnight apology and said "what kind of person gets banned from ITV2? That's like being banned from a pub that's on fire."

In a 2009 episode of Screenwipe, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker criticized the channel's programming for being nihilistic and called it "a monument to cultural death" and "frighteningly meaningless."[44]

When the channel launched, the logo was very similar in style to the ITV logo at the time and ITV were worried the channel looked just like an extension of ITV and didn't offer anything new. It was soon after this that the channel received a complete overhaul along with the other ITV channels in 2006. The channel received a new lime green logo, chosen as ITV thought it had a young fresh feel to it. The channel also received six new idents which all had names beginning with 'Too' to relate to the 2 in the channel's name. They were called; "Too Fast", "Too Hot", "Too Cold, "Too Expensive", "Too Glamorous" and "Too Loud". Each of the idents were made up of a mix of shades of green to match the channel's logo.

In 2008, the channel received another new look. The green logo was kept but edited. The channel now had a new 3D logo to try to make the channel look more modern and appealing to a younger audience.

During Newcastle United's run in the 2004–05 UEFA Cup, the channel was rebranded as ITV Toon on matchdays, referring to the club's nickname the Toon. The channel's yellow and blue idents changed to black and white, to match the club's colours.[55]

In line with the corporate rebranding of ITV, ITV2 received a new look on 14 January 2013. The channel's slogan became "the home of infectious entertainment", and received a "hot red" version of the logo and red on-screen identity including new idents.[56]

ITV2 presentation was given a refresh on 12 August 2015, with new branding, idents, the introduction of gif style bite-sized promos, and a re-boot of the channel's social feeds, spanning YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram along with the launch of new ITV2 channels on Snapchat and Tumblr. As part of the refresh, the logo kept its previous state but was changed colour from hot red to turquoise.[57]

ITV2 was given another rebrand on 15 November 2022, with new branding and idents along with the launch of the streaming service ITVX. As part of the refresh, the logo is now coloured pink and uses idents that are cross-used across ITV1, ITV3, ITV4, and ITVBe with different views which reflect the channel's image and programming output.[58]

• ITV2 at itv.com