A year after this article has published I think a lot has been changed and improved at ITV.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/10/itv-player-project-penguin
Yes there are countless problems with most of the pages, but the launch of the brand new websites like Coronation Street, This Morning, Loose Women, TV Classics page and of course the new look ITV Player have been much needed and has improved the website IMO. There are still sites like Emmerdale that need a relaunch, ITV Local of course launched with a new and shall I say quite nice design nothing like its former self but at least it is there. And hopefully they will build on it. There also is the launch of a new Tonight and ITV News page in early January to look forward to and maybe ITV Local may get a few tweeks aswell.
I agree, there are still a lot of pages that need to be updated, but the pages that do have the new look like the ones you mentioned, as well as Im a Celebrity, X Factor as well look great.
Emmerdale desperatly needs a new look site. It's A popular show but ITV seem to be treating it like the doormat for Corrie to walk over
Some pages like these:
http://www.itv.com/tvburp/
are a little poor, but still better than the old style that Emmerdale still has.
The next thing ITV need to do it get the website centre aligned to bring it up to date. I think left aligned sites nowadays feel old, and many people now have large widescreen monitors so they have to keep looking to the left of their screen.
But at least we know they are slowly getting pages sorted.