ITV Play (channel)

ITV Play
Launched	19 April 2006
Closed	13 March 2007
Owned by	ITV plc
Website	ITV Play at the Wayback Machine (archived 16 October 2006)
Availability at time of closure
Terrestrial
Freeview	Channel 27
Satellite
Sky	Channel 856

ITV Play was a short lived 24/7 participation television channel in the United Kingdom owned by ITV plc. The ITV Play name continued on the ITV Network until December 2007/2008.

It was launched as a standalone channel on Freeview (taking on the slot which was previously occupied by the Men & Motors channel) on 19 April 2006 and started broadcasting on the Sky platform on 24 July 2006.

The ITV Play channel was created in response to and hoping to cash in on the popularity of late night quiz shows on the ITV Network and ITV2 such as Quizmania and The Mint. ITV Play also offered additional gambling services on their website.

It cost at least 75p per call to participate. This charge was made even if the caller was not put through to the studio. A free entry route was available through the website. Users were restricted to 150 calls/web entries in a 24-hour period. At peak times callers had a 1 in 8500 chance of getting through to the studio to play.

The 75p per call cost of a chance of involvement in shows, higher from mobile phones. Callers were charged for each call they made, whether connected to the studio or not. ITV had promised to make its programmes with higher production values than quiz programmes on other quiz channels, but with little evidence of such. Many of the callers were kept on hold and unable to connect.

Restrictions put on the number of attempts to call, 150 per day, mean that in a 24-hour period BT callers could still spend a maximum of £112.50 per day. This changed in February 2007 to 100 calls per day, so the maximum was £75 a day on BT.

In January 2007, Ofcom found ITV guilty of breaching its broadcasting code for making answers to its quizzes too obscure. Viewers complained after two answers to the question "what items might be found in a woman's handbag?" were revealed to be "balaclava" and "rawlplugs". The 21 September 2006 quiz, was found to be in breach of the rule that "competitions should be conducted fairly". Ofcom warned ITV Play that there must be no further incident. Ofcom subsequently confirmed this was the first formal breach of the code recorded against ITV Play. For its part, ITV Play described it as a "one-off" incident of poor judgement.