ITV 4

Could have been worse, you should have seen the hash of a job Telewest made with ITV4. Not on EPG and only on M&M - but to make it worse, it was a widescreen picture without the flag so we all got 16:9 squeezed into a 4:3 picture. Could it get worse? Oh yes ... the footy was in 4:3 with pillarboxes!! So, we had about a third of the 4:3 screen taken up with black. Muppets.

Oddly enough, NTL Ireland did exactly the same thing - was this common to all ITV4 on M&M broadcasts?

So let me get this right, on freeview ITV4 will run in the evenings from 6pm and we lose the ITV News Channel which falls silent till 6am.
Men and Motors continues on freeview each day from 11am as it did before. So if and when the ITV Kids Channel starts on freeview, will that only be able to run from 6am to 11am whilst Men & Motors is off the air or will there be some more reshuffling?

Thinking is that ITV News will fall off Freeview completely until ITV come up with some more space for it.

I hear Lenny Bennett was upset not to have been asked again.

Do CBS make it in widescreen? If it's made in 4:3, I'd rather see it like that than cropped.

As common with most american shows now, Dave is in 16:9 HDTV.

ITV4 launches as the most successful digital channel ever

2nd November 2005: Last night saw the launch of the latest addition to the ITV family, ITV4. Across its TX hours (19:00-02:30) ITV4 averaged 335,000 viewers and a 3.23% share, and peaked with an audience of 1.2m viewers, making it the most successful digital channel launch to date.

Across the night ITV4 was the most popular digital channel, beating Sky One by 0.6 share points. The channel proved popular amongst the commercially important upmarket viewers taking a 5.1% share of ABC1 Men.

In peak (19:00-24:00) the channel averaged 447,000 viewers and a 3.32% share, the best peaktime share for a channel launch. By comparison More4 averaged a 1.61% share in peak on their launch night and Sky Three, which launched the day before ITV4, debuted with an 0.83% share in peak.

ITV4 launched with live coverage of the Champions League group match between Real Betis & Chelsea. The programme averaged 633,000 viewers and a 4.0% share, peaking at 1.2 million viewers at 21:35.

Not really suprised considering there first programme was a football match.

ITV and Most Successful.

Now theres words you don't often hear!

Quite clever scheduling really on ITV's part to use the chelsea match to sell the channel.
On the look of the channel, I think it's a strong identity. A good use of the 4 and a great set of animations. I'm not too sure of the idents at the moment, I think that they lack strong music to go with them, to set the mood of the idents. They are a bit short, but as said, perhaps they are using short versions of the idents!

My favourite piece of presentation had to be the lovely ITV4 Movies sting, which used the line off the 4 as a scrolling film reel, that then linked into the sponser. Very nice.
I am surprised that they didn't do something like this for an ITV4 sport sting. Surely they should have created one if they aren't going to use the main ITV Sport sting, though of course that could have just been for the first night.

I am surprised that they actually used the standard ITV Sport scorecard, they could have just done a Sky Sports and had the score and clock in the left as the ITV4 logo was on the right.

I do prefer the dog being on the right, and it actually fits in with the right orientated logo across their package, though it does seem bizarre that it appears on the left in some promos, though surely they will rectify this if they are leaving it on the right.

Of course it could have been just because of the football, and so that they didn't have to keep moving the ITV4 and on MM dogs.

It is nice to have Letterman back, it seems strange how things have continued, like the ape, human or elephant painting game that they played for the last time (or so they said) last night, that we've never seen before.

It's very strange if there is a 16:9 version available that they aren't using that, but then again, they don't get a clean feed of it. I was thinking the same with the new Kojak, I was wondering whether there would be a 16:9 copy available for that, but I presume that with that they would have used the 16:9 copy.

The adverts seemed strange within Letterman, ITV2 used to always take them when Dave handed to a break (obviously not every break, the others used to fade into the next segment), as for ITV4 though, they seemed to do a UKTV and just break whenever.

ITV4 seems to be doing the thing that irriatates me, the same as BBC Three and Four, how they don't use all of their hours. Take tonight for example, ITV4 are only on air until 3:20, then with Teleshopping until 5:50. Even if they just show Letterman at 5:10 like ITV2 used to do, though I suppose unlike the BBC channels, ITV makes money by showing teleshopping.

Overall, a good looking channel, it gives me hopes for the other ITV channels when they relaunch, hopefully with the same ITV logo, not with any differences (bar colour I suppose), and I hope that ITV4 will continue its strong audience lead, even though it won't be as strong without the football.

One final point, ITV4 was billed as the men's channel for sports, movies and US imports, yet the newly commissioned US import NUMB3RS on ITV1 (Mon, 23:00), is getting it's replay on ITV3, seems odd as it's a US import (ITV4) and a replay (ITV2).

It seems that the right alligned dog was for the first night only (and football, obviously), as for the first programme of the night, it's over on the left.

And how come they are airing Department S, and the Saint. They are good male programmes, but they would fit onto ITV3, or MM. Interesting.