ITN rebranded as On Demand News

I've noticed over the last few days that ITN's online news content has been rebranded as "On Demand News"

itn.co.uk now redirects to ondemandnews.com, and their presence on other sites such as You Tube, Facebook and Twitter has also been rebranded.

This seems a bit of a strange decision, given that ITN is such a strong brand for news; and as a result of the rebrand, the ITN brand now has very little online presence.

Following the complete removal of the remaining ITN branding from ITV News last year, it's surprising that they've now almost completely removed what was their only remaining significant consumer presence of the ITN brand, and appear to have given up on ITN as a consumer brand.

I'm not so sure that it's such a strong brand for the audience they're presumably trying to attract on YouTube. Certainly for my generation I don't think it's a very well known brand at all.

On Demand News sounds a bit more obvious that it's a news channel when you see it on a YouTube sidebar than ITN does. Although it's not a particularly attractive name.

Channel 4 News and 5News still have the ITN logo on their endcaps.

Is it not a case of ITN providing news for On Demand News - even if they also own it.

Didn't there news site used to be called that years ago?

No, it's a complete rebrand of ITN's online news content.

To be honest, what I've seen of ITN's online stuff in recent years, they are better off disassociating it from the ITN name

It's still got the ITN logo and link to ITN's corporate site at the foot of the page.

Their app has also been rebranded to 'odn', but the ITN app aside that has always looked a second rate news app in comparison to the BBC's and Sky's.

Understandably the clients who give ITN their main source of income will always have the better News dominated websites and apps, namely ITV and Channel 4, yet for ITN as a brand they can use the resources that go into ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 news but little other money is available for ITN to use this to their own advantage. The main reason why ITN News Channel failed, in terms of getting footage there was no issue but in terms of getting their own operation together they needed deep pockets (something they still don't have) and or a partner, remember the ITN News Channel was a joint venture with NTL.

So I think to disassociate the ITN brand to their current online output is certainly a wise decision, as I do feel it devalues the ITN brand. It's probably also why FYI Daily on ITV2/3/4 is an ITN product but their name isn't to be seen anywhere.