ITV - Independent Television

Ownership:
"ITV was formed after the merger of Carlton and Granada in February 2004. The broadcaster has interests in GMTV, media company SMG, Ireland’s TV3 Television Network, Australia’s Seven Network as well as football clubs Arsenal and Liverpool. It owns the terrestrial TV Channel ITV1 and free-to-air digital channels ITV2 and ITV3. The company also operates a leading cinema screen advertising business in the UK and has similar joint ventures in Europe and the US."
Found here is quite an informative forum thread which I aquired this information from.

I also found out that of the 13 networks which merged/got taken over on this venture, only Granada still exists in it's original form. Their success has much to do with their very successful soap Coronation street, which they earn around £60 000 per episode.

ITV's chairman is former BBC chairman Michael Grade who joined them in late 2006 after Michael Allen resigned. Although other companies such as BskyB own large portions of ITV.

Funding & Revenue:
The majority of ITV's revenue comes from advertising and media companies, which want their products promoted in the primetime slots. I also found the blog of an independant business owner who joined ITV, this is called the ITV Ventures™’ Opportunity. The blog and more information about it can be found here.
ITV also wants to expand into interactive TV gambling for a source of more money, as can be found here.
ITV has been facing financial trouble for the past few years and has been close to shutting down a few times, as shown in this news article I found here.
Their main funders Carlton and Granada are refusing to put further money into ITV.

Means of Distribution:
ITV's main form of distributing its media is of course, through television. Although they also have a website which you can find various sorts of information you want, and even catch up on any soaps or programs you may have missed.

On the internet they also own a website called Friends Reunited, which is a site dedicated to finding any of your old schoolfriends and peers. This is exactly what Rupert Murdoch, owner of BskyB did by buying Myspace, another popular but more young peer website. By doing this he can advertise on the site as much as he wants.

ITV's interactive TV and Broadband service will bring many new opportunities, such as:

• Producers get design freedom, a standard way of developing interactive programming, advertising and services that can be deployed to all platforms, and the ability to create an interactive storyline while editing their on-air programming for shows in production today
• Networks can distribute their interactive programming to a larger base of potential interactive viewers and give their viewers complete choice and flexibility around how they interact with a show
• Sponsors get broader reach for their two-way interactive advertisements, which provide valuable consumer feedback and data
• Cable and satellite operators are able to provide greater value for their digital subscribers and increase revenues with access to interactive applications including enhanced television programming, interactive advertising, games, managed content and virtual channels
• 3rd Party Developers can develop software and authoring tools that will be compatible with existing interactive solutions and distribution platforms

Found on ITV's standards website, which is worth a read, here.

Table taken from Wikipedia, this table shows the media which ITV are involved in.

Companies	ITV plc · SMG plc · UTV plc · Channel Television Ltd · GMTV Ltd
ITV Franchises	Northern Scotland: Grampian · Central Scotland: Scottish · Scottish/English Border and Isle of Man: Border · Northern Ireland: UTV · North East England: Tyne Tees · Yorkshire/Lincolnshire: Yorkshire · North and North West England (Weekdays): Granada · North, Midlands, and North West England (Weekends): ABC · Wales and the West of England: TWW, WWN, ITSWW, HTV · Midlands: ATV, Central · East Anglia: Anglia · London (Weekdays): Rediffusion, Thames, Carlton · London (Weekends): ATV, LWT · South and South East England: Southern, TVS, Meridian · South West England: Westward, TSW, Westcountry · Channel Islands: Channel
National franchises	Breakfast: TV-am, GMTV/GMTV2 · Teletext: ORACLE, Teletext Ltd.
Non-franchise regions	STV · ITV Thames Valley · ITV London
Digital channels	ITV2 · ITV3 · ITV4 · CITV Channel · Men & Motors
News	ITN · ITV News
Sport	ITV Sport
Gaming	ITV Play
Children	CITV
Weather	ITV Weather
Mobile	ITV Mobile
Online	itv.com · ITV Local · Friends Reunited
See Also	ITV television presentation · ITV Digital
Independent television regulators	ITA (1955-72) · IBA (1972-91) · ITC (1991-2003) · Ofcom (2003-present)

Audience:
ITV seems to be geared towards a very wide audience range with programs ranging from the Simpsons, to Soaps, to programs such as countdown (which a much older audience would watch).
The majority of the programs on ITV are for the teen-middlage range by having lots of soaps, movies and young dramas. This would make the channel more a family channel, which people can get home from work and watch together as a family, instead of fighting over te romote control.



Formats/Types of programs:
The majority of programs on ITV, as said in previous section, are Soaps and serials. These programs have people tuning in every day to find out what is happening in their favourate soap stars lives.
An interesting news article about one of Michael Grade's plans for the future of ITV and its content can be found here.
They also play the occasional movie at night from around 8pm onwards.
Their format has quite a relaxed feel to it, with not much news or programs geared around current world events, which makes it a relaxed channel which you can tune in to and escape the stresses of the real world. Although they do have their own seperate news channel as well, ITN.

For example of ITV's guide, click here.