ITV Be

Struggle to see the point of ITV Be, especially as a FTA channel. If ITV2 was strong in other genres fair enough, but it's not.

Seems to be a repositioning of ITV2, but without any detail yet of added investment which it will need if you take all the very non-scripted female skewing content away. TOWIE is one of the better performing ITV2 shows, so the risk is that audience share slips as you syphon off content. But I guess they'll be looking at impacts across the whole family of channels.

I expect the schedule for ITVBe will be packed with TOWIE, Peter Andre, Real Housewives, Dinner Date, Loose Women. Sounds like hell

The way I see it is ITV2 is probably going to become refocused just as a general entertainment to channel to complement ITV, basically more things like Xtra Factor, Celebrity Juice and Movies. Where as ITVBe will be one big glorified daytime all the time line up.

ITVBe isn't my cup of tea but I think it'll do well, ITV2's daytime line up has an audience and it's unashamedly commercial and tacky, but people like it.

This all harks back to years ago when there were plans to launch an itv5 as a lifestyle channel, sounds like a similar thing mixed with towie & the like.

With more comedy US and British (though I've only got the line about the second series of the job lot airing on itv2 rather than itv to go on), it may be that they'll be repositioning itv as the 2nd entertainment channel, something similar to what it was at launch.

Well with Two and a Half Men, Mom, Dads, The Job Lot either recently aquired or soon to come, I wonder if ITV2 is trying to be a bit of a Freeview Comedy Central? Those, and of course Benidorm and other ITV[1] comedy repeats, it wouldn't surprise me. It's only Freeview competitor (I think) would be E4.

And BBC Three.

Although BBC Three only airs from 7pm, whereas E4 shows repeats of its most popular American comedies between 5-7.

The thing is over the last year or two ITV2 has dipped their toe into the E4 type territory and failed to make any inroads - so to suddenly refocus the channel on something that isn't actually working for them seems really odd.

I wonder where ITV Be (and ITV Encore for that matter) will end up on the EPG - wouldn't be surprised if ITV3/4 are bumped down.

And what will ITV2 show in daytime when all the female skewing reality and unscripted stuff is on 'Be'.

More YBF marathons ?

Do ITV have a spare Freeview slot for 'Be' or will it replace a +1 ?

ITV's current Freeview slots:
6 - ITV2
10 - ITV3
24 - ITV4
27 - ITV2+1
33 - ITV+1
34 - ITV3+1 (18:00-00:00)
39 - The Store (00:00-04:00)
54 - ITV4+1 (04:00-06:00)

Remains to be seen if ITV Be gets a new stream or just replaces another, presumably ITV2+1. I would bet on ITV Be taking channel 27 on Freeview regardless, with ITV2+1 bumped to 34 and ITV3+1 to 39, then The Store to 54 and ITV4+1 probably closing as it's presumed that's only holding a channel number anyway. Wouldn't be too surprised actually to see The Store incorporated into ITV Be.

Have ITV not bid for any additional HD capacity on Freeview, or has BBC and C4 cornered all the new space?