Sometimes, when a change takes place, it does so with enormous fanfare, other times, it barely gets noticed. This is one of those changes that happened at some point recently, and nobody noticed.
Somehow, a deal has obviously been done between GMTV and the owners of the ITV News Channel, to enable the channel to broadcast on Freeview Channel 41, during the GMTV hours. So, now you can have the ITV News Channel, 24 hours a day on Freeview, just as you can on Sky and Cable.
It has to be said, this is not the most unexpected development, nor is it very major, but it has to be said, it was one of those situations that always seemed to be a little bit wrong. As the ITN News Channel, they could only broadcast at breakfast time on DTT. This got extended during the last days of ITV Digital to 6am to 6pm, and indeed during the time between DTT platform providers, by which time it had become the ITV News Channel, it extended out to 24 hours a day. But when the ITV News Channel was moved to the Digital 3 & 4 Multiplex, GMTV enforced their option on the 6am - 9.25am franchise time of the multiplex. But they were not able to programme that time, so it left a static slide on DTT, whilst ITV News Channel continued broadcasting normally on satellite and cable. I'm glad to see that this little anomaly has been properly rectified.
