ITV - Organisation

Organisation

STV Group plc (STV) UTV Media plc (UTV) The logos of the three ITV franchise holders.

ITV is not owned by one company, but rather by a series of regional companies that provide a regional service while also broadcasting programmes across the network. Since 2011, the entire ITV network is in the hands of three companies.

The network is regulated by the media regulator Ofcom who is responsible for awarding the broadcast licenses. The last time the franchises were reviewed was in 1991 with all operators' licenses being renewed without contest or review since, making it the longest ITV has gone without a review. All the companies owning a franchise license are part of the non-profit body ITV Network Limited, which commissions and schedules network programming with compliance previously handled by ITV plc and Channel Television. However, since the amalgamation of companies since the creation of ITV Network Ltd., and since that Channel Television is now owned by ITV plc, it has been replaced by an affiliation system. This system, approved by Ofcom, results in ITV plc commissioning and funding the network schedule, with STV and UTV paying a fee to broadcast it. All licenses have the right to opt out of network programming (except for the national news bulletins), however many do not due to pressures from the owner company or because of limited resources.

As a public service broadcaster, the ITV network is obliged to broadcast programming of public importance, including news, current affairs, children's and religious programming as well as party election broadcasts on behalf of the major political parties and political events, such as the Budget. The network also needs to produce accessible output containing subtitles, signing and audio description. In exchange for this programming, the ITV network is available on all platforms free to air and can be found at the top of the EPG of all providers.

Since the launch of the platform in 1998, all of the ITV franchises have received gifted capacity on the digital terrestrial television platform. At present, the companies are able to broadcast additional channels and all choose to broadcast the ITV plc owned ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and CITV in their region. UTV, Scottish and Grampian have previously broadcast their own services, UTV2 in the former and S2 in the latter two, until 2002 when they adopted the ITV plc channels. The broadcasters all make use of the Digital 3&4 multiplex, shared with Channel 4.