ITV will change its name to ITV1

British broadcaster ITV plans to rebrand its main linear channel to its former name of ITV1 in autumn 2022, NewscastStudio has confirmed.

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

Sources say the change won’t be a complete rebrand – the channel won’t revert to the original ITV1 logo, for example.

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

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

It will also set the linear channel apart from its parent organization ITV plc, sources say. Both the linear channel and the holding company are 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 beginning in 2012.

At the time, the logo was very different from anything seen in broadcasting – which was largely the point. Since then, despite mixed reviews, the logo has established itself as a strong brand, so it’s no surprise 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 revamp.

This logo often uses what Rudd called “color picking behavior”, whereby the five parts of the logo take on the colors of their surroundings, whether background images or other elements. There is also a “default” state when used alone.

ITV currently operates several other brands in its portfolio, including ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and ITVBe, each having a hand-drawn variant of the logo with a distinctive color scheme and large numbers of letters added alongside.

It’s unclear if the network will use a similar design strategy for the updated ITV1 look.

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

However, none of these numbers necessarily correspond to a channel number that a viewer uses to watch a channel. In Britain, live “freeview” channels are still given channel numbers, but they do not always match the name or branding of the network.

ITV, for example, is on Channel 3 in London (BBC Three is at the very top at 23). Offers that are branded as Channel 4 and Channel 5 are both shown on their corresponding numbers (although there are both ITV and BBC channels with the same digital branding, causing them to get other string assignments, often not immediately related to the number in the name).

In the United States and other parts of the world, numbers may appear in the branding of the live broadcast station and often refer to the channel number (or a number mapped via PSIP) or, in some markets, which channel it is usually assigned to. Television systems.

WBTS in Boston brands as “NBC 10” despite never being on OTA channel 10, and WZVN in Ft. Myers, Fla. brands ABC 7 on air despite never having been on the channel and instead refers to where it is 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 distinct, but often complementary, programming to each other. CNN originally used the name CNN 2 for a brief period before changing it to CNN Headline News (it is now known as HLN).