ITV Regions Fault

Hear, hear

I don't agree.

For many years after the launch of Sky Sports 2 (and perhaps even Sky Sports 3), the original channel was still called just Sky Sports, and I always thought that looked rather odd.

The BBC changed their main channel to BBC1 as soon as BBC2 launched. To have a channel labelled '2' without there being a '1' in existence strikes me as rather illogical, and is made even worse when you start adding '3' and '4' to the group.

Must be one of the earliest imitators or used to be associated with it, as it opened in 1956 and has the original font on the signage!

http://www.granadadrycleaners.com/images/SL380590_.JPG (can't embed it as it's too big)

You must lose so much sleep over Showcase TV, TCM, Movies4Men, Eurosport and Nick Jr, not to mention the channels where there is a 1 but no 2 or 3 etc such as Star One, VH1, Setanta Sports 1, Sahara One....

Not at all, and your examples are hardly major UK PSBs.

However, equally insignificant channels such as 'True Movies' managed to re-label their channels as 1 & 2. Don't Eurosport offer their channels on different platforms in various parts of Europe: in which case you can understand the reason why '1' isn't included in the name if many of their viewers have no access to '2'.

Calling a channel 'X One/1' on its own denotes some sort of priority. Sky Channel was changed to 'Sky One Entertainment', and also to later promote its prominence in their original Sky Multi-Channels subscription. There was briefly a Sky2 in 1996-7, before the later reincarnation.

As for ITVplc, their intention was to provide access to all their channels to as much of the UK population as possible. It seemed sensible to include that in the nomenclature as soon as a sufficient number were able to receive ITV2 (& later ITV3/ITV4).

The BBC initially went for 'Choice' and 'Knowledge' as the names for their additional main digital channels, but soon realised that '3' and '4' would be better received (but not launched in that order) and easier to market, although they retain non-numerical names for the children's, news, politics, and region specific channels.

Really? Is that what happened?

And here I thought it was all about the letters "ITV" no longer symbolising just a TV channel but rather a revolutionary multi-platform organisation, with exciting new propositions in the pay TV, online and interactive gaming sectors.

Have I been grossly misinformed?

Indeed. BBC Four launched as a replacement for 'Knowledge' in March 2002, and BBC Three followed as a relaunched 'Choice' almost a year later in February 2003.

Yep, they had to go through a few hurdles with the BBC Governors to relaunch the 2 channels, the original plans for BBC4 were approved straight away but BBC3 was rejected and they had to go back and change a few things. This delayed the launch by at least 6 months.


The reasoning behind ITV1 initially was to raise awareness of there being an ITV2 and other ITV channels (at the time, Sport and News and 3). I think it would be odd if there wasn't a 1 but was a 2,3 & 4

You are Tumble Tower's second cousin and I claim my £5.

Ha, I remember watching that promo a few months ago, out of the five services they show at the beginning (ITV, ITV2, ITV Digital, ITV Select and ITV Sports Channel), three of them had closed within the next 12 months.

If you're not going to add anything meaningful to the discussion, then sit in the corner and be quiet!