Almost one year after its official launch, ITV confirms plans to expand news coverage and add regional news on ITVX in 2024.
- ITVX will be the home of a pop-up news channel that will become available during breaking news stories.
- 12 regional news services will become available on the platform, with some regional content exclusive to ITVX.
ITVX has received over 18.5 million streams of its existing short form news content since its launch and has recently experimented with live news during the recent State Opening of Parliament.
Now ITV has confirmed it will be developing its news provision. Starting in December, a weekly programme presented by Tom Bradby centred around Prime Ministers Questions will make its debut exclusive to ITVX.
Then from January, ITV News teams will be on standby to launch a pop-up news channel that will go on air whenever there’s a major breaking news story.
Additionally, ITVX will launch 12 regional news services. They’ll carry all regional news programmes offered by ITV, plus short form on-demand content of the most popular content from across the nations and regions plus exclusive regional reports.
That follows changes to Public Service Broadcasting quotas, as proposed in the Media Bill. Until now, ITV’s quota of regional content has been entirely based on ITV1. Going forward, content on streaming services will also count towards quotas.
▶ Overview: Features coming to ITVX in 2024
- A pause ad format
- Short form advertising opportunities
- New distribution partners
- More sponsorship opportunities
- Regionalised news
[Source: ITV]
▶ The 12 online regional services from ITV
ITVX originally launched with a sole national stream of ITV1, rebroadcasting the London region. Although the ITVX banner was applied to existing regional news websites on ITV.com, regional content hasn’t been fully integrated into ITVX. So for example, searching for ‘Calendar’ on the search box in the ITVX app won’t currently yield a result taking viewers to the Yorkshire-based news programme.
- Anglia
- Border
- Calendar (Yorkshire)
- Central
- Channel Islands
- Granada
- London
- Meridian
- Tyne Tees
- UTV
- Wales
- West Country
Marc Thornham