ITV’s Digital Plans

ITV chief executive Charles Allen has said that the company is to launch more channels to ensure that they stays competitive as broadcast television moves towards its all-digital future. Mark Desmond, managing director, said that details of the new channels would not be announced until after ITV3 launches this autumn. One of the channels is thought to be a children’s offering in association with a US broadcaster.

Additionally, the broadcaster is in talks with BBC director-general Mark Thompson to acquire BBC Worldwide’s 10 UKTV channels. To achieve this, ITV would buy out BBC Worldwide’s share in the joint venture with Flextech Television. This would bring ITV a raft of ready-made lifestyle channels including UKTV Gold, History, Food and Drama.

UKTV

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?