ITV join Pay-TV

ITV have been having financial troubles for a few years now, particularly because advertising revenue is so low nowadays. The broadcaster has a plan to reverse its decline in the marketplace by adding HD versions of ITV2, 3 and 4 to Sky's platform. This move into the pay-TV arena is ITV's first step in a five-year strategy to get half its income from non-advertising sources. ITV are also planning to invest £75m over three years into its content, digital channels and online ventures.

ITV's three new HD channels will become available on Sky this autumn, starting with ITV2 in October. It's expected that other TV providers will also get access to these new channels, once deals are agreed.

You can read more on this news at The Guardian.

My first thought is this sounds like a sound business decision for ITV, but they'll have to get the pricing right with providers. ITV2 is (rather scarily) a very popular digital channel, but subscribers don't want to see their bills increase just because there's now a HD version available. I mean, how much of ITV2's content would even be in HD? It's more likely upscaled-HD (at best), but hopefully that will change now ITV are making such an effort. As for ITV3 and ITV4; those channels are generally filled with repeats from ITV's archive of '70s-'90s programming, so full HD isn't going to be the norm.