ITV Nightscreen

Teletext screens had been employed by the BBC since 1980 and by Channel 4 since 1983 to fill airtime cheaply. In-vision teletext was only ever occasionally used on the ITV network. From April 1986, certain regions, firstly Central Independent Television, followed in January 1987 by Yorkshire Television, started showing overnight teletext sequences containing details of local job vacancies under the title Jobfinder. Initially the pages were broadcast for an hour after the end of regular programming but from April 1987 Central broadcast Jobfinder throughout their overnight downtime.[4] When 24-hour television began in 1988, the majority of ITV regions broadcast a Jobfinder programme in the hour preceding the ITV Morning News. Also, for a short while in 1987, an Oracle-provided service preceding TV-am broadcasts, known as Daybreak, was broadcast before the start of TV-am's programming.

ITV Nightscreen's origins can also be found in a programme simply titled Freescreen, which was made and screened by Meridian Broadcasting in its early years. The Meridian version mixed the teletext pages with local news stories and short videos made and sent in by viewers.

ITV Nightscreen was broadcast on ITV1, STV and UTV starting from when the last programme finishes and ending at 5:05 am most weekdays and at 6:00 am at weekends and holidays.

ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 & ITVBe also broadcast Nightscreen. Availability depended on how much unused time was left, and could sometimes last for as little as five minutes as teleshopping is shown on these channels. There was a different music tracklist for each channel, however, upcoming programmes on only the ITV network were shown. CITV did not use the service since the channel closes down at 9:00 pm. Although not an ITV-branded channel, ITV's defunct Men & Motors channel would in its later years carry the filler from the close of programming until 6:00 am.

In its early years, Nightscreen would often begin at around 4am and finish before the ITV News at 5:30. The length of the programme varied depending on the overnight schedules. Some ITV regions didn't broadcast Nightscreen initially, including STV, who opted to continue with their own service entitled Scottish Night Time, Meridian, who opted to continue with their own Freescreen service, and Central, who opted to broadcast their own local programming within that slot. In the Yorkshire and Tyne Tees regions, Nightscreen ended at 5:00 am to allow both networks to opt-out for their regional Jobfinder programme.

In February 1999, STV started carrying Nightscreen as a programming filler during its overnight programming strand 'Night Time TV' (run by SMG and jointly aired between the Scottish and Grampian regions at the time), whilst sister station Grampian had already carried Nightscreen as a filler in their programming schedules by this time too.[5]

In December 2005, three months before the now defunct ITV Play began transmitting, a quiz show entitled Quizmania began broadcasting in the early hours on ITV. Subsequent programmes that followed were The Mint, Make Your Play and Glitterball. This resulted in Nightscreen being pushed back to just a half-hour service between 5am and 5:30 am

In 2008, largely as a result of widespread scandal surrounding phone-ins, ITV Play was permanently axed, meaning that Nightscreen began broadcasting from around 4:30 am.

ITV Channel Television previously ran its own version of the service entitled Channel Nightscreen consisting of local news headlines and programming information. Channel Nightscreen was axed towards the end of 2011 shortly after ITV plc brought Channel Television.

In 2010, ITV started airing The Zone for two hours, a gaming and shopping programme block, usually airing from 12:30 am to 2:30 am, leaving Nightscreen often cut back to as little as an hour and sometimes removed from ITV's schedule altogether.

In April 2010, STV launched its own Scottish night-time service, The Nightshift, broadcast in the STV Central region and consisting of programming highlights, news, competitions and viewers texts and emails read out by a live out-of-vision presenter. STV North continued to broadcast ITV Nightscreen until July 2010, when The Nightshift was extended to the North region. The programme included regional news opt-outs for the four STV sub-regions: Aberdeen & the North, Dundee & Tayside, Edinburgh & the East and Glasgow & the West. STV dropped The Nightshift from its schedules in June 2015, meaning Nightscreen was extended on the station.

From 1 August 2019, home shopping channel Ideal World began simulcasting during part of the overnight period on ITV. Consequently, the two bursts of Nightscreen on UTV and Channel have now ceased as these regions now follow network scheduling due to there being no restrictions about them showing Ideal World, unlike the previous gaming programmes. STV began simulcasting Ideal World from September 2021, meaning Nightscreen was only shown once per night on the channel, instead of twice.

From January 2021, ITV started airing FYI Extra at 3:00 am for 15 minutes daily. This meant that Nightscreen was reduced from 75 minutes to 60 minutes.

On 10 April 2021, due to the death of Prince Philip, Nightscreen was broadcast continually from 12:15 am to 6:00 am without a break, in all ITV regions.

On 1 October 2021, the final episode of Nightscreen aired and was replaced by Unwind with ITV the following day. The final episode was no different to any other ordinary broadcast, and did not feature a goodbye message like other services did.

On 2 October 2021, Nightscreen was replaced by Unwind with ITV (Unwind with STV on STV in Central Scotland and North of Scotland). This features time-lapse footage of various peaceful environments with ambient, relaxing music in the background, also provided by BMG Production Music. Its introduction was, partially, a part of ITV's Britain Get Talking campaign, and is produced by Rock Oyster Media.[3][6][7] Ofcom's 2019 Review of Regional TV Production and Programming Guidance stated that these promotional text-based shows could no longer be part of ITV's regional production quotas anymore (from 2021) and so ITV had to replace the Nightscreen slots with a new type of programme.[8] This also meant that the contract between ITV plc and Gower Creative Communications regarding production of ITV Nightscreen was definitely terminated, and Scala servers on which Nightscreen ran were shut down permanently. The final episode of Nightscreen aired on 1 October 2021.

• TV Guide at itv.com