Had the channel been called ITV First instead of ITV Encore it would've had the stronger identity and be a success.
Why ‘ITV First’ for a majority repeats channel ? Probably less that 5% of the content was new.
Never liked it. It took commissioning budget away from ITV for dramas that didn’t find an audience & robbed ITV3 of some of the newer repeated drama content to put them behind a paywall.
They seemed to have buddied up with Sky for the venture who promoted heavily at the time. I think they wanted to make it into an original drama channel but it never materialised nor did it achieve ratings success. Can’t remember the last time that I watched the service.
In Sky’s eyes it frees up a valuable LCN spot on the EPG, which itself is due for a massive reshuffle.
Unprecedented but not entirely surprising either. This year’s Edinburgh TV Festival saw Lygo stating that Encore did well as a box-set service.
The linear channel never did perform well in the ratings, and the idea of showing drama before ITV did never came to fruition. Even in July 2017, tests on Sky saw the channel abruptly have FTA transmission activated for a small period of time.
Most of the content frankly was made up of repeats from both ITV and ITV3, and the overreliance on this completely devalued the service with regards to its pay-TV credentials. The right decision.
Worth noting that it will be the first ITV DCL channel to be axed since M&M in 2010. And by the time it closes next spring, we could well see ITV3 have a double course worth of content...
Whilst the channel may have seemed a little pointless, ITV Encore on Now TV is pretty good and offers a huge range of dramas.
If ITV integrated Encore into their premium Hub subscription, I think they’d find more success. No adverts, 1080p HD and access to the back catalogue of dramas would be something I’d consider paying for.
However in ITV’s case, there’s not much of a loss here. Sky (and possibly NOW TV), still receive the programming on demand, as well as extending the service to the likes of Virgin Media and BT. Much of the archive content would fit well in ITV3’s schedule - though it remains to be seen what ITV does with it.
IIRC Sky own the EPG slot, so I wonder what they will bump up.
How did that occur, where Sky owned the EPG slot? Is that the reason for it being Sky exclusive throughout its existence?
I have watched quite a few of the dramas, but usually through the box sets option. I noticed most of them seem to be readily interchangeable with ITV3, so never saw the point of it - or even its "exclusivity". I doubt anyone is going to miss it as a linear channel, and wonder why they will even keep the brand separate from ITV3 once they go on demand only.
From reading above, it seems ITV had more elaborate plans for the channel originally, such as original drama or first runs, but that doesn't match the name.