Media UK

ONdigital

ONdigital launched to the public on 15th November 1998 providing a range of subscription services on DTT.

ONdigital plc was originally set-up as BDB and initially was owned equally between Carlton, Granada and BSkyB. BSkyB were forced to leave BDB following pressure from the ITC in 1997.

ONdigital broadcast on three of the available six digital terrestrial multiplexes. Initially ONdigital offered viewers a range of eleven primary channels and five premium channels.

Channels to grace the ONdigital line-up at launch were:

(primary channels) Carlton Cinema, Carlton Food Network, Carlton Kids, Carlton Select, Carlton World, Cartoon Network, Eurosport, Granada Breeze, Granada Men & Motors, Granada Plus, Sky One, UK Gold, UK Horizons, UK Play and UK Style

(premium channels) FilmFour, Sky MovieMax, Sky Premier, Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 3.

Initially UK Style was only broadcast Monday-Wednesdays and UK Horizon was broadcast Thursday-Sundays, it wasn't until the rebrand to ITV Digital that these channels were to broadcast all week.

MTV was added as a primary channel on 1st May 1999, followed by ChampionsON99 in August 1999, and finally in November 1999 Sky Sports 2 joined the line-up.

Carlton Kids and Carlton World closed down in February 2000, and were replaced with Discovery Kids and Discovery Wings, in March 2000 Carlton Select also closed down. This was partly replaced by Carlton Food Network extending its broadcast hours. ChampionsON99 was rebranded as ONsport 1 at the end of March. May 2000 also saw the launch of pay-per-view service ONrequest, which was run jointly between ONdigital and SDN.

On 1st January 2001, Nickelodeon and Paramount Comedy joined the line-up, followed by E4 in the spring of that year. Wellbeing also joined the line-up in 2001.

On 11th July 2001 owners Carlton and Granada rebranded the service as ITV Digital.