ITV Encore coming June 2014

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a547340/itv-announces-new-drama-pay-channel-encore-for-sky.html

ITV has announced plans for a brand new pay channel on Sky.

ITV Encore will be dedicated to the broadcaster's best drama output, and will be launched in 2015.

Not sure how this will differ from ITV3. I thought they already had a home for drama.

Maybe it will repeat alot of the older ITV dramas, which have never seen the light of days on ITV3 or UK gold.

As I understand it the drama on Encore will be a lot newer than on ITV3 (and eventually include new commissions) - which in turn means ITV3 will focus on older content.
I think some on twitter have misunderstood it being a "pay" channel and saying no-one will want to pay for it- no-one will be paying for the channel individually, it'll be part of a Sky package.

Official release from ITV:

http://insights.itvmedia.co.uk/blog/2014/01/29/we-are-proud-to-announce-the-new-pay-channel-itv-encore/

ITV aren't helping matters by calling it a "Pay Channel". Something like "Sky exclusive" would have been better.

I note the renewal of the ITV2-4 HD deals, presumably putting broader carriage on the backburner again.

Well they haven't been Sky exclusive since March, when they launched on Virgin, but it seems they will very much remain subscription-based.

They're wrongly assuming everyone is as media savvy as they are. To everyone not interested in the media, ie most people, "pay channels" are SkyMovies/Sports. My parents still call BBC1 - C5 "normal telly"

How much money do we think a channel gets from Sky if they're on the basic tier. IIRC it's related to their audience size, but £21.50 doesn't really go far, especially once Sky take their cut. Presumably too when a new channel launches Sky can't just cut payments to every other channel as well.

I think it's a waste of time. What's the point? I don't think there'll be many subscribers, but that's just my opinion.

They won't be subscribing to the actual channel, as a previous poster has already said. They will get a cut of the subscription money from the Sky package, and of course the advertising revenue from the channel.

Not many subscribers? There's about 10 million of them. The point is to make ITV additional money out of pre-existing archive. The point is quite obvious really.