Prior to the launch of
Channel 4 in 1982, the name "ITV2" had sometimes been used to refer informally to
an envisioned second commercial network in the UK. However, the name resurfaced in the late 1990s for very different reasons. The launch of
digital terrestrial television services in the UK saw each existing analogue terrestrial broadcaster given a slice of bandwidth with which to carry their existing service after the analogue switch off, with space left over for new channels. While strictly speaking this space belonged to each regional contractor for use within their own region, ITV had undergone a series of buyouts earlier in the decade; the three players operating the majority of the network,
Granada,
Carlton, and
United News & Media, jointly launched ITV2 in 1998 to be broadcast to most of the country as a uniform service. While free-to-air, it was marketed alongside their own subscription based
ONdigital platform. Other ITV licencees, SMG, UTV and GMTV launched their own services in the space (see below). Ahead of a proposed white paper for digital broadcasting in the summer of 1995, ITV already had interest in launching ITV2, which would broadcast in widescreen. One of the likely possibilities for the new channel was the airing of repeats of programmes from the main ITV channel or sporting events. The new channel would be a concerted group effort between the various ITV franchise owners, as they would have shares in the channel. Moreover, it would be a centralised channel from the outset, without relying on the federal structure of the existing channel. ITV2 was announced in May 1998, and the channel's original controller was . Most of the programmes were repeats, but these would enable viewers to catch up with recent ITV programmes. Airing of retro output was ruled out, because it did not have the intention of becoming another archive channel. Among the ideas for original programmes included a daily teenage talk show set to air on weekdays, a late night half-hour review of the week's ITV soaps, a pop music review show to air during peak time, an interactive sports magazine programme and a football-themed game show. There would also be coverage of alternative sports, such as golf, basketball and snow boarding. Within days of the announcement, independent production company
Chrysalis hoped to provide programmes for the channel. Snooker coverage was announced in June, with two new tournaments being created specifically for the new channel. At the time, the channel had an awareness rate of just 5%. The channel was initially due to launch in November, but it had already faced a potential problem based on low ratings, based on the possibility of airing Manchester United and Arsenal matches for the upcoming Champions League season, but would see a decrease when the group phase was expected to end in December. In July, Julia Lamaison was appointed its director of broadcasting, as part of its two-channel strategy for digital broadcasting. The original plan of making it a youth-centric channel was superseded by a broader, mixed-genre and mixed-demographic format, countering the plan to downsize ITV1's age to be closer to ITV2's. It had an 80-hour a week schedule, running 4pm-2am on weekdays and 9:30am-2:30am on weekends. Programming was balanced between 50% catch-up material (repeats, also labelled as "the nation's VCR"), original programming which would take up a quarter or a third of the total offer, and the rest being imports. The channel had a launch budget of £221 million, little more than double of Channel 5 in its launch the previous year, which was £110 million. Discussion on advertising minutage were underway, being managed by a three-way advertising house managed by Carlton, Granada and UNM. Advertisers that were not on the main ITV channel were keen on appearing on ITV2. It was also confirmed that ITV2 would become a priority for analogue cable services, which were already at full capacity. An agreement to carry the channel on Cable & Wireless Communications' analogue cable service was signed in November, coinciding with the launch of the first digital transmitters in England and Wales. The channel was also part of a low-cost package unveiled in early October. The channel was expected to cover 500,000 households with digital television by year-end 1999. Advertising adopted a flexible strategy, sold on a fixed-price basis. ITV2 launched at 7:00pm on 7 December 1998. The first programme was an hour-long introductory programme called
It Takes Two, presented by and .
Billie Piper was heavily involved in the channel's promotion at launch, with an updated version of the 1966 song
It Takes Two sung by her used as the theme song for the launch programme and featured in the original promos for the channel. The programme featured messages from
Michael Barrymore,
Trevor McDonald,
Boyzone's
Ronan Keating,
Jerry Springer and
Samantha Janus. A highlight of opening night was Trevor McDonald's interview to Fergie, which was plagued with concerns of possible low ratings before it even aired. Estimated statistics revealed that the channel had limited terrestrial coverage, as well as a potential audience of 850,000 cable subscribers. While ITV2 is now an entertainment channel aimed to a younger audience; at its launch in 1998, it was a mixed genre channel and featured some programmes aimed at much older audiences than what the channel broadcasts currently. Despite this, the channel was launched to target a younger, more male audience. Such original programmes were mostly produdced on a low budget, including a late night music programme aimed at teenagers,
Bed Rock, plus studio-based game shows. Much of the original content in its launch schedule was current affairs related programming fronted by ITV newscasters.
Katie Derham presented a weekly media analysis programme called
Wide Angle,
John Suchet fronted a weekly current affairs discussion programme called
Who, What, Why, and
Trevor McDonald presented an interview series,
Trevor McDonald Meets.... These three programmes all ran on Sunday nights. There were repeats of popular ITV programmes including
Midsomer Murders,
Inspector Morse,
A Touch of Frost,
Heartbeat,
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,
Gladiators,
CD:UK, ''
Don't Try This at Home, Trisha, This Morning, Loose Women and My Wonderful Life, American acquisitions such as Judge Judy, The Jerry Springer Show, The Late Show with David Letterman and Maggie Winters, omnibus editions of ITV soaps Emmerdale, Coronation Street, The Bill and Home and Away, and a Saturday football results service called Football First
, which was promoted to ITV1 in 2001 (while maintaining an ITV2 slot) and rebranded as The Goal Rush. Other launch programmes included youth magazine show Bedrock
and Soap Fever'' which taken a look at the UK's major television soap operas. There was also live coverage of the
UEFA Champions League among a range of other sports coverage. Many of the older-skewing drama series were dropped after the launch of
ITV3 in 2004, and the launch of
ITV4 the year later saw ITV2 ditch sports coverage, except on certain occasions as overspill. The channel underwent a mass repositioning as a general entertainment channel, starting a £500,000 campaign to increase awareness, fronted by Jerry Springer. This was due to mixed messages regarding the channel's format, which has changed since launch. Commercial director Andrew Chowns denied that this had to do with Channel 4's plan to launch E4, and that this would entice viewers to "stay" with the ITV family of channels. A website was also launched, in order to increase its takeup among web users. In June 2004, ITV plc announced that they were going to double the channel's programme budget and would add more American series and movies. On 1 November 2004, in an attempt to launch ITV3 on Sky, ITV2 moved from 175 to 118 on Sky after ITV plc bought GSkyB for £10million. As a result,
Plus was permanently closed down, with its EPG slot taken by ITV3. On 10 October 2006, ITV announced the launch of a one-hour timeshift service of ITV2, ITV2+1. The channel launched on 30 October 2006 along with ITV3 +1. In November 2006, ITV2 commissioned its first soap opera,
Echo Beach. The series was to be interlinked with ITV1's comedy-drama
Moving Wallpaper. In the end however,
Echo Beach was broadcast on ITV1 instead of ITV2 as was originally planned. ITV2 and its one-hour timeshift channel began broadcasting 24 hours a day on . The hours formerly held by
GMTV2 were moved to
ITV4.
GMTV2 programming moved from ITV2 to ITV4. On 20 August 2008, ITV2 unveiled a new look. The logo was given a 3D look, with six new
idents. The new look co-incided with a line-up of new programmes including
Celebrity Juice,
CelebAir,
The Fashion Show and
No Heroics. ITV2 was launched on
UPC Ireland in the
Republic of Ireland on 4 January 2010, marking the first time the channel has been officially available in the country. The channel had already been (and remains) available to Irish viewers on
free-to-air satellite for some time, however, it is still not listed in the
Sky electronic programme guide. On 1 April 2011, ITV2 was removed from UPC Ireland along with ITV3 and ITV4 due to the expiry of a carriage agreement between UPC and ITV. UPC Ireland claim that ITV is not in a position to renegotiate the deal because ITV had struck a deal with another channel provider to provide it with exclusive rights to air certain content from the channels. Conversely, UPC Ireland also claims to have been in discussions right up to the last moment to continue broadcasting the channels. ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 were restored to the UPC Ireland lineup on 20December 2011.
Virgin Media One and its sister channel
Virgin Media Two already hold carriage agreement to air certain ITV content within the Republic of Ireland, alternatively
UTV is available within the Republic. ITV2 is available along with ITV3 and ITV4 within
Switzerland, all three channels are available on
SwisscomTV and
UPC Cablecom. ITV2 is registered to broadcast within the European Union/EEA through ALIA in Luxembourg. From 11 January 2011, ITV2 +1 on the
Freeview platform has changed its broadcasting hours to 7:00pm until 4:00am. On 1 June 2011, an additional hour was added in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland, allowing ITV2 +1 to start at 6:00pm. On , ITV2 +1 began to broadcast 24hours a day on Freeview across the UK, using an eleventh stream created on . As part of the changes, ITV2 +1 swapped slots on Sky's electronic programme guide with
Men & Motors, resulting in the timeshift channel making a significant jump from channel 184 to 131. It is now Sky 218. ITV2 was made available on Freeview in the
Channel Islands on 29 February 2012, a few months after ITV plc bought
Channel Television from
Yattendon Group plc. In February 2014, ITV2 announced it was to focus more on entertainment programming, specifically drama and comedy panel showswith reality TV and lifestyle, such as
The Only Way is Essex spun off to a new channel,
ITVBe. This shift was not for long; however, as in 2015, the revival of
Love Island premiered on ITV2, and has since became the channel's flagship programme. On 23 March 2015, it was announced that ITV2 had acquired the rights to broadcast US animated comedy
Family Guy, which had previously been airing on competing youth channel
BBC Three. At the same time, ITV also bought the rights to
American Dad!,
The Cleveland Show and
Bordertown. They began airing on ITV2 on 29 February 2016. When sport was moved to ITV4, this meant no sports would air on ITV2. However, ITV4 was an evening only service on weekdays and so, ITV2 would broadcast weekday daytime sports, including games from the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The weekend daytime sports coverage was broadcast on ITV4. On 20June 2016, ITV2 simulcast ITV's coverage of a
UEFA Euro 2016 match between
England and
Slovakia to allow ITV in Wales to broadcast its own coverage of the match between
Wales and
Russia (this match was also shown on ITV4). It was repeated in 2021 for the
UEFA Euro 2020 match between England and the
Czech Republic to allow
STV in Scotland to broadcast its own coverage of the match between
Scotland and
Croatia (this match was also shown on ITV4). In September 2020, ITV2 broadcast the
British Touring Car Championship rather than ITV4 as the channel was broadcasting both the
Tour de France and World Series of Darts, and ITV3 broadcast
ITV Racing. In November 2021, the channel moved into the true crime genre with
The Social Media Murders, a three-part documentary series with a different case examined every night, over three days. A second series debuted on ITVX in March 2023 with repeats on
ITV1. In March 2022, ITV announced that their new reality game show
Loaded in Paradise, which sees teams in Greece trying to win a chance of spending the prize pot of 50,000euros, and
Tell Me Everything, a mental health themed drama series, would be two of the first ITV2 shows to debut on their new streaming service
ITVX before getting terrestrial slots, which eventually came in April 2023 and June 2023 respectively. In June 2022, ITV2 picked up a number of American drama series, primarily teen and family dramas from the late 1990s and 2000s, for daytimes, including re-runs of
One Tree Hill,
Hart of Dixie and
The O.C. as well as the sports drama
All American, which had replaced ''Bob's Burgers
in its 7pm timeslot. Subsequently, ITV2 has also picked up Dawson's Creek, Veronica Mars and Chuck. Later additions have included Charmed and Gilmore Girls''.
All American was unsuccessful in its 7pm slot and so after a month of consistently low ratings, it was moved to around 2am each morning, with ''Bob's Burgers
returning on 4July 2022. Despite this incident, in January 2023, ITV2 would later stop airing Bob's Burgers
altogether and replace it with Superstore
, a programme which ITV2 used to air until September 2022 when it was replaced by Secret Crush
. After another three months of low ratings, this decision was eventually reversed, and Bob's Burgers'' returned to ITV2 for a second time in April 2023. In August 2022, the channel axed its Katherine Ryan–presented dating show
Ready To Mingle after some episodes in the first series received ratings as low as 60,000viewers, and picked up the rights to the
Big Brother format, launching a teaser trailer for its return to British TV during the
Love Island final. On 19 September 2022, ITV2 and other ITV digital channels simulcast ITV's coverage of the
funeral of Queen Elizabeth II at
Westminster Abbey. On 8 October 2023,
Big Brother made its debut on ITV, with a special launch show simulcast on both ITV1 & ITV2 watched by more than 2.5million viewers. On 16 April 2025, it was announced that sister channel ITVBe would close and its programmes would move to ITV2, including
The Only Way is Essex which aired on ITV2 prior to 2014. Animated and live-action comedies such as
Family Guy and ''
G'wed'' would be retained on the ITV2 schedule. ITVBe's channel slots would be used to launch a new game show–centric channel named
ITV Quiz. ==Most watched programmes==