ITV Digital
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| Carlton Communications plc and Granada plc joint venture | |
| Industry | Media |
| Fate | Liquidated |
| Predecessor | ONdigital plc |
| Founded | 15 January 1997 |
| Defunct | 30 June 2002 |
| Headquarters | Marco Polo House, Battersea, London, United Kingdom |
| Products | Pay TV services and programming |
ITV Digital was a British digital terrestrial television broadcaster which launched a pay-TV service on the world's first digital terrestrial television network. Its main shareholders were Carlton Communications and Granada plc, two franchises of the ITV network. Starting as ONdigital in 1998, the service was re-branded as ITV Digital in July 2001. Low audience figures and an ultimately unaffordable multimillion-pound deal with the Football League led to the broadcaster suffering massive losses. These forced it to enter administration in March 2002. The service ceased permanently in June 2002, with the terrestrial multiplexes subsequently taken over by Crown Castle and the BBC to create Freeview in October 2002.
Digital terrestrial television (DTT) began in the United Kingdom in 1998. Six multiplexes were set up, with three of them allocated to the existing analogue broadcasters. The other three multiplexes were auctioned off. A consortium of Carlton Television, Granada Television and British Sky Broadcasting won the auction as British Digital Broadcasting (BDB). The brand ONdigital was adopted for launch. BSkyB was forced by the Independent Television Commission (ITC) to withdraw from the consortium on competition grounds; this effectively placed Sky in direct competition with the newly launched service, although BSkyB was still required to provide key channels such as Sky Movies and Sky Sports to ONdigital. With Sky originally part of the consortium, ONdigital would have paid discounted rates to carry Sky's television channels. Instead, with its positioning as a competitor, Sky charged the full market rates for the channels, at an extra cost of around £60million a year to ONdigital. In all ONdigital was given one year from the award of the licence to launch the first DTT service. In addition to launching audio and video services, they also led 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.
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