The ITV News Channel is no longer broadcasting

Can't find it at the moment, but someone did post a quote from Charles Allen a while ago saying something along the lines of 'there are no plans to close M&M, but its future will remain under constant review'. Given that Plus' closure was announced about two hours beforehand, it really wouldn't surprise me if it does close, no matter what they're saying officially.

One of the further problems for the ITV News Channel if it does go from DTT is that I am sure ITV will be reluctant to cross-promote it on the other channels, for fear of driving people to cable / satellite.

stupid idea to get rid of itv news channel alot better than the bbc channel. Men and motors is rubbish a load of old shows

Men & Motors was a Satellite and Cable only operation for over 8 years and it survived no problem, taking it off Freeview won't do any damage, who'll miss endless The Sweeney, Magnum P.I, Miami Vice and The Professionals repeats?

Though the ITV News Channel isn't a strict Public service such as an ITV Region for instance, it wouldn't help ITV's reputation for taking it off Freeview if they did of course. If you took it off Freeview it would go back to the ITN NC's days of getting 10,000 viewers at most. ITV News will probably never go into profit (Sky News has never and won't) but it needs to make some income to keep going, ITV aren't struggling for money, they made £200 Million profit in their first year, surely some of that couldn't go into the NC.

No matter what people think of the channel (whether you love it or hate it) I like it, it provides a good alternative from the BBC or Sky, and also exploits the ITV Regions which the BBC doesn't do and Sky can't do.

If they did take it off Freeview then it wouldn't have long left, same as the ITN Channel, on DTT (which at that time was failing) it was only on from 5.30am until 9.00am, it was lost on Sky, well promoted on NTL but still wasn't successful and was near death.

Something nobody has mentioned is that ITV don't necessarly need to make a decision by November 1st.

Instead they could just have the ITV News Channel on Freeview from 6am to 6pm, which covers most of the flagship programmes and the slots that are most well resourced and probably most watched. Freeview viewers would only lose Joyce Ohajah and not much else

Then they've got until February next year to start waving a bit of ITV cash about to try and get another slot. I don't know much about Freeview and the way the transponders are full so I don't know how easy that would be

Good thought Andrew, and one I hadn't considered. It is certainly an excellent option for ITV plc. After all, why waste the space when you already have a channel you can transmit in ITV4's downtime!

Plus, I'd watch men and motors after 6pm.

Because ITV4's downtime will be filled with the new Children's ITV channel. But maybe the idea would work in M&M's daytime hours.

The CITV Channel doesn't launch until February, as I said in my original post.

It's not a very nice situation however I think ITV4 should replace Men & Motors as they are basically offering the same thing.

I'd contend that less people would miss endless repeats of old news bulletins and cheapo ads for charities and ambulance-chasing insurance companies...

where do we find these "endless repeats of old news bulletins"?