ITV London

Infobox ITV franchisee
name = ITV London


based = London
area = London
owner = ITV plc
airdate = 28 October 2002
old
"Final Carlton Television and London Weekend Television logos"
captionb =
closeddate =
replaced = Carlton Television (Monday morning to Friday afternoon) and London Weekend Television (Friday afternoon to Sunday evening)
replacedby =
website = [http://www.itvlocal.com/london itvlocal.com/london]

ITV London is the collective brand name and identity used by Carlton Television and London Weekend Television in the London ITV region.

The franchise for ITV for London and its environs is awarded to two broadcasters with one operating Monday to Friday afternoon and the other from Friday evening throughout the rest of the weekend. The weekday and weekend licences are currently held by Carlton Television (weekdays) and London Weekend Television (weekends) respectively, however as ITV plc owns both these companies they operate under the ITV1 brand rather than their legal names. The only noticeable differences between the two franchises is that local weather forecasts broadcast by LWT Friday to Sunday is branded as "London Weekend Weather", and is sponsored by a different company to Carlton Television's weekday forecasts. ITV London like other ITV plc regions does not receive visual local identification for regional programming, although this happened much earlier than in other regions. From time to time however it is verbally called "ITV1 London".

In March 2004, ITN took over production of ITV London's regional news programme London Tonight from London News Network, which relocated from their previous South Bank studios to ITN's Gray's Inn Road headquarters.

ITV1 London is carried as the sole alternative ITV region to Sky Digital customers, currently carried on EPG position 993. It appears at that channel for all other ITV regions except London. The reason for this is so that audio description services, which are only carried on the London variant on satellite are readily available to all viewers. It is possible however for Sky viewers to receive all ITV regions under the "Other Channels" menu. Information can be found in order to do this on the Internet.

The Friday 5:15pm to Monday 5:59am franchise has been held by LWT since 2 August 1968 (LWT did not start broadcasting at 5.15 pm until 1 January 1982; up to the end of 1981 it took over from Thames Television at 7.00 pm) and the Monday 9:25am to Friday 5:15pm franchise has been held by Carlton since 1 January 1993.

ITV London is based at The London Studios, on the south bank of the River Thames, the home of London Weekend Television since 1968. Weekday London broadcaster Carlton Television previously leased space in the facility, alongside GMTV, but now shares common space with LWT.

External links

* [http://www.itvlocal.com/london ITV London] at itvlocal.com