ITV Digital

ITV Digital logo

ITV Digital was a British terrestrial digital television broadcaster. It was launched as ONdigital in 1998, the world's first digital terrestrial television network. It was subsequently rebranded as ITV Digital in July 2001. Its main shareholders were the UK ITV broadcasters Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc (who have since merged to form ITV plc).

History

Initial ONdigital logo

Digital terrestrial television started in the UK in 1998. Six multiplexes were set up, and three of them were formed from capacity gifted to the existing analogue broadcasters. The other three multiplexes were auctioned off. A consortium of Carlton Television, Granada plc and BSkyB won the auction, and set up ONdigital. BSkyB was later forced to withdraw on competition grounds. From winning the license to launching the world's first DTT service ONdigital was given one year by the ITC. In addition to launching audio and video services they also lead the specification of an industry wide advanced interactive engine (based on MHEG-5). This was an open standard that was then used by all broadcasters on DTT.

The new digital broadcaster was launched in 1998, with a lineup of 18 channels, including many channels developed in-house by Carlton and Granada. In 2000, internet service ONnet was launched. In the same year, a deal with multiplex operator SDN lead to the launch of pay-per-view service ONrequest.

Failure

However, from the launch date the service was quickly losing money. Aggressive marketing by BSkyB for their own digital service, Sky Digital made the ONdigital offer look unattractive. The new digital satellite service provided a free dish, Digibox, installation and around 200 channels for the same price ONdigital. ONdigital's pricing had been set to compare with the older Sky analogue service of 20 channels. ONdigital also failed to realise that Sky had cast off its downmarket image and ONdigital believed there was considerable public antipathy towards Sky (and Rupert Murdoch), which appeared to matter less than they had hoped.

In addition, the choice of 64QAM broadcast mode coupled with far weaker than expected broadcast power meant that the signal was weak in many areas, an incomprehnsible pricing structure (comprising of many "menu options"), a poor quality subscriber management system (badly adapted from Canal Plus), a paper magazine TV guide (BSkyB had provided an Electronic Program Guide), insufficient technical customer services and there was much signal piracy because there was no return path and no requirement (as with BSkyB) to connect the set-top box's modem to a phone line.

Another problem was that the set-top boxes were sold in high street stores and supermarkets at a price that included - in theory - the set top box on loan and the first years subscription package. As the call to activate the viewing card did not require any bank details many ONdigital boxes which were technically on loan were at unverifiable addresses. Also, whilst at this time ITV withheld their channel from the expected third position on the Sky Digital EPG, many ONdigital viewers had to look to channel 800 (rather than 3) to find ITV.

Finally, Carlton and Granada had chosen not to employ ONdigital management and staff directly, so many people were on short term contracts and key people left with no notice.

Canal Plus launched proceedings against a NewsCorp subsidiary, NDS, for cracking and then releasing details of their encryption technology – the same technology used by ONdigital, which was subsequently settled out of court as part of Vivendi's acquisition of Telepiu in 2002. News Corp is the majority shareholder of BSkyB.

Rebranding

In desperation at the churn rate, Carlton and Granada turned to their most valuable asset - the ITV brand - and rebranded ONdigital as ITV Digital. They also (in a very expensive deal) purchased the TV rights to the Football League and launched the ITV Sports Channel. A massive re-branding campaign was launched to support the new naming, with customers even being sent ITV Digital stickers to place over the existing ONdigital logos on their remote controls and Set Top Boxes. The software running on the receivers was never changed though, and always displayed 'ON' on nearly every screen.

It also had a famous advertising campaign involving the comedian Johnny Vegas and a knitted monkey (voiced by Ben Miller). A replica knitted monkey could be obtained by signing up to ITV Digital. Because the monkey could not be obtained without signing up to the service, a popular market for second-hand monkeys developed. At one time original ITV Digital Monkeys were fetching several hundred pounds on eBay and even knitting patterns delivered by email were sold for several pounds.

Administration & Freeview

However, these changes failed to revive the broadcaster. Indeed, the cost of the Football League deal proved one too many a burden for ITV Digital, and it was placed into administration on 27 March 2002, after the League refused to accept a £130m pay cut in its £315m deal with the ITV Sport Channel. Most subscription channels ceased broadcasting on ITV Digital on 1 May 2002. The collapse caused severe financial difficulties for lower-division football clubs who had budgeted for large incomes from the television contract. The Football League sued ITV Digital's parent companies, Carlton and Granada, claiming that the firms had breached their contract in failing to deliver the guaranteed income. The League lost the case, with the judge ruling that it had "failed to extract sufficient written guarantees". The League then filed a negligence claim against its lawyers for failing to press for a written guarantee at the time of the deal with ITV Digital. This time it was awarded a paltry £4 in damages of the £150m it was seeking.[1]

A consortium made up of the BBC, BSkyB and Crown Castle International was granted ITV Digital's old broadcasting license, and launched the Freeview service on October 30 2002, offering 30 free-to-air TV channels and 20 free-to-air radio channels including several interactive channels such as BBCi and Teletext but no subscription or premium services. Those followed on March 31, 2004 when Top Up TV began broadcasting eleven pay TV channels in timeshared broadcast slots.

During 2002, ITV Digital's liquidators started to ask customers to return set top boxes or pay a £39.99 fee. This threatened to undermine the fledgling Freeview service as most digital terrestrial receivers were former ONdigital and ITV Digital units. Carlton and Granada stepped in and paid £2.8m to have the boxes stay with their customers, as at the time the ITV companies received a discount on their licence payments based on the number of digital homes they had converted. Second hand ONdigital receivers are widely available from sources such as eBay and are fully compatible with the successor Freeview system (and also with Top Up TV). They can be an attractive means of getting a cheap DVB-T-compatible receiver but have some drawbacks: they are slower than more modern boxes with faster processors (ONdigital receivers often take several seconds to change channel for example) and lack support for the full Freeview Electronic Programme Guide (as this feature was introduced well after the ONdigital receiver software was written). The receiver software can also be buggy, causing the boxes lock up and refuse to respond to keypresses on the remote control.

The three multiplexes that were run by ITV Digital remained blank until a week or so before Freeview's launch. However, E4 and FilmFour continued broadcasting for over two weeks after the shutdown. Strangely however, E4 carried subtitles until the placeholder was deleted in September 2002. Most of the original ITV Digital channel placeholders and LCNs were kept until Freeview's replaced them, leaving large gaps between channels.

ITV Digital operated out of Marco Polo House, the south London building that had once housed the lavish headquarters of the ill-fated British Satellite Broadcasting, and had call centres located in Plymouth and Northern Ireland.

ITV Digital Channel List

Correct as of April 30 2002, the day before most pay services ceased

20. ITV Sports Channel
21. Sky Sports 1
22. Sky Sports 2
23. Sky Sports 3
24. Sky MovieMax
25. Sky Premier
26. Sky One
27. Cartoon Network
28. Carlton Cinema
29. British Eurosport
30. Granada Plus
31. Men & Motors
32. UK Gold
33. MTV
36. Discovery Channel
37. Play UK
38. UK Style
39. Nickelodeon/Paramount Comedy
41. FilmFour
42. E4
43. UK Horizons

Set Top Boxes

This is a list of ITV and ONdigital set-top boxes.

• Nokia Mediamaster 9850T
• Pace DTR-730, DTR-735
• Philips DTX 6370, DTX 6371, DTX 6372
• Pioneer DBR-T200, DBR-T210
• Sony VTX-D500U
• Toshiba DTB2000

Carlton/Granada Digital Television Channels

Carlton and Granada, the owners of ON/ITV Digital created a selection of channels, which formed some of the core content of channels available via the service, these were:

• Carlton Cinema [Ceased Transmission 2003]
• Carlton Kids [Ceased Transmission 2000]
• Carlton World [Ceased Transmission 2000]
• Carlton Select [Ceased Transmission 2000]
• Carlton Food Network (Rebranded TASTE CFN) [Ceased Transmission 2001]
• On Sport 1 [Ceased Transmission 2001]
• On Sport 2 [Ceased Transmission 2001]
• Granada Good Life (Rebranded Granada Breeze) [Ceased Transmission 2002]
• Granada Men and Motors (Rebranded Men and Motors) [Still broadcasting]
• Granada Plus (Rebranded Plus) [Ceased Transmission 2004] [Channel's demographic fulfilled by ITV3]
• FirstOnDigital [Ceased Transmission 2000]
• Wellbeing (Granada & Boots) [Ceased Transmission 2002]
• Shop! (Granada and Littlewoods) [Ceased Transmission 2002]
• On Request/ITV Select [Ceased Transmission 2002]
• ITV Sport Channel [Ceased Transmission 2002]
• ITV Sport Extra [Ceased Transmission 2002]
• ITV Sport Select [Ceased Transmission 2002]

Timeline of events

• 1997
  • 25 June 1997 - The ITC award the sole DTT broadcast licence to British Digital Broadcasting
  • 20 December 1997 - The ITC award the three pay TV digital multiplex licences to BDB
• 1998
  • 29 July 1998 - BDB rebrand as ONdigital
  • 15 November 1998 - Formal broadcasting begins
• 2000
  • 1 May 2000 - Formal broadcasting of Pay-per-view (PPV) service ONrequest begins
• 2001
  • 11 July 2001 - ONdigital rebrand as ITV Digital
  • 22 August 2001 - PPV service ONrequest rebrands as ITV Select
• 2002
  • 27 March 2002 - Placed into administration
  • 1 May 2002 - Pay-TV operations cease
  • 30 October 2002 - Formal broadcasting of replacement Freeview service begins

See also

• British Sky Broadcasting

External links

• ONdigital in liquidation, Information for subscribers.
• ONdigital history site
• ITV Digital goes broke
• Set-top box offers low-cost digital
• List of channels offered by ONdigital
• General Top Up TV introduction page, including instructions on how to adapt old ONdigital receivers for the service

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