ITV will change its name back to ITV1

British broadcaster ITV is planning to rebrand its primary linear channel back to its old name of ITV1 in the fall of 2022, NewscastStudio has confirmed.

News of the possible change was first reported by British site TVOne and has been verified independently by NewscastStudio sources.

Sources say the change is not going to be a full rebranding — the channel won’t be reverting back to the original ITV1 logo, for example. 

Slight variations of this ITV1 logo was used from 2006 to 2013. ITV will be changing its name back to ITV1 but will not be reverting to this design, sources tell NewscastStudio.

Sources say the company is looking to help distinguish its various offerings across platforms, including the upcoming ITVX streaming service.

The company currently offers ITV Hub as a streaming offering and that will be combined into ITVX.

It will also distinguish the linear channel from its parent organization, ITV plc, sources say. Both the linear channel and holding company are both commonly referred to as “ITV.”

The network will retain its distinctive script-like logotype introduced in 2013, designed as part of an overall rebranding by Rudd Studio starting in 2012.

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At the time, the logo was significantly different than anything seen in broadcasting — which was largely the point. Since then, despite mixed reviews, the logo has established itself a strong mark so it’s not surprising the network is sticking with it.

“Alongside the informative BBC and the provocative Channel 4, ITV is friendly and warm,” the company wrote in a blog post explaining the redesign.

That logo often uses what Rudd called “color-picking behavior” that calls for the five parts of the logo take colors from their environment, whether that be background imagery or other elements. There’s also a “default” state when it’s used on its own.

ITV currently operates multiple other brands in its portfolio, including ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and ITVBe, each of which have a variation of the hand-drawn logo with a distinctive color scheme and large number letters added next to it.

It’s not clear if the network will use a similar design strategy for the updated ITV1 look. 

The use of numerals to designate multiple offerings from the same broadcaster is common in Britain in other parts of the world. BBC operates BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three and BBC Four, among other offerings, but notably opts to spell out the numerals as words.

None of these numbers necessarily correspond to a channel number a viewer uses to watch a channel, however. In Britain, the “freeview” over the air channels are still assigned channel numbers but they don’t always correspond with the network’s name or branding. 

ITV, for example, is on Channel 3 in London (BBC Three is all the way up at 23). The offerings that brand on air as Channel 4 and Channel 5 both air on their corresponding numbers (despite there being both ITV and BBC channels with the same numeral branding, causing those to get other channel assignments, often which have no immediate relationship to the number in the name).

In the U.S. and other parts of the world, numbers may appear in over-the-air broadcast station branding and ofter refer to either channel number (or one mapped via PSIP) or, in some markets, what channel it commonly is assigned on pay TV systems.

WBTS in Boston, brands as “NBC 10” despite it never having been on the OTA Channel 10, and WZVN in Ft. Myers, Florida, brands as ABC 7 on air despite never being on the channel and instead referring to where it’s found on most local cable and satellite providers.

Some cable networks, such as C-SPAN 2 and C-SPAN 3 and MTV2 use numbers to distinguish separate networks that offer separate, but often complementary, programming to each other. CNN originally used the name CNN 2 for a brief time before changing it to CNN Headline News (it’s now known as HLN).

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