ITV Channel Television

ITV Channel Television, previously Channel Television, is a British television station which has served as the ITV contractor for the Channel Islands since 1962. It is based in Jersey and broadcasts regional programmes for insertion into the network ITV schedule. Until November 2011, Channel Television was one of four ITV companies independent from ITV plc alongside the two STV regions in Scotland and UTV in Northern Ireland. The station has been owned by ITV plc since 2012.

Until the takeover by ITV plc, Channel Television also had a responsibility to ensure independent productions for ITV complied with the regulator Ofcom's broadcasting rules. Until the regulations changed, Ofcom could only impose a maximum fine of 5% of the revenue of the company responsible for compliance, and as Channel was by far the smallest ITV contractor, this minimised the potential fines to which ITV as a whole would be exposed. Channel handled compliance for programmes including The X Factor, Midsomer Murders and the British Comedy Awards.

The station's main competitor is the BBC, which operates an opt-out of the South West England news programme Spotlight.

Channel Television was awarded the licence for the islands in 1960 by the then regulator the Independent Television Authority (ITA). However, the ITA pointed out that the Television Act 1954 (2 & 3 Eliz. 2. c. 55) that established ITV did not include provision for the Channel Islands and as a result, if the ITA was to operate an ITV service there, it would have to be permitted by means of extending the act to the islands with an Order in Council, which was granted as the Television Act 1954 (Channel Islands) Order 1961 (SI 1961/2039). In addition, the new station faced difficulties connecting to the rest of the ITV network. The solution was the construction of a microwave relay station on the northern island of Alderney that would connect with another ITV station, initially Westward Television. At first, the station received difficulties in getting permission for the new mast, but these were overcome in September 1961.

Channel Television finally went on the air on 1 September 1962, the 16th and penultimate ITV station to launch (WWN, the 17th station, launched two weeks later in North & West Wales but collapsed less than two years after launch). It served the smallest population of any ITV station with only around 150,000 people in 54,000 households.

The size of Channel's audience made the station initially vulnerable to any disputes and disturbances to the ITV network as a whole. When technicians went on strike in the summer of 1968, Channel was the only station not to be affected. While Channel did survive the 1968 strike, it was badly affected by the Three-Day Week of 1973-4 which restricted the hours of television stations to save electricity. However, Channel managed to escape the large ITV strike that blacked out the rest of the network in August–October 1979, on the same understanding as before. Channel managed to provide a service based mainly on films, imports, extended local news coverage and regional programming, with the biggest problem coming from difficulties in transporting film to the Jersey studios.

Channel also made advances during this period to enhance its service. In 1970, Channel formalised its relationship with South West England ITV franchisee holder Westward Television allowing a greater share of programming between the two franchise holders. Channel finally converted to colour television on Monday 26 July 1976, the last region to do so (five years after the next to last contractor, Grampian Television, began colour transmissions) and seven years after the first. Delays were due to the cost of upgrading the studios and purchasing new equipment and the need to provide a stronger network feed as the region's northernmost areas got better signals from Southern and Thames/London Weekend. All local programmes were being made in colour by the following year with Channel donating all of its old cameras to local museums. Just before the 1979 ITV strike began, Channel became only the second TV station in Europe to introduce electronic news-gathering (ENG) to its local news operation (BBC1 had used ENG for London-originated news since at least 1978), ending the use of film.

The new decade began with a new franchise round for the islands in which Channel was unopposed. However, there was to be a change of franchise in the South West of England with Westward being replaced by Television South West (TSW), requiring a new agreement with TSW. However, in 1986 Channel changed from whom it sourced its network feed, instead changing to Television South (TVS) which served the South and South East of England from Southampton and Maidstone. A side-effect of this change was a disruption to serials airing on the station in the afternoon due to the serial having begun on TVS at a different time to TSW so that they were at a different point through the serial's run. For instance, Channel had to miss over 100 episodes of The Young Doctors, the first nine episodes of Prisoner Cell Block H which had been screened on TVS in 1985, and it had to re-show 60 episodes of Sons and Daughters as TVS was behind TSW. And rather than introduce its own overnight service when this programming area began in 1988, Channel simulcast TVS's night time schedule, something it continued to do when TVS was replaced by Meridian in 1993.