ITV Play, the controversial participation TV channel, will not return to the air following recent criticisms of the genre. The channel’s DTT capacity will be taken by a +1 hour version of the female skewing ITV2, which is already available to Sky Digital viewers, ahead of a possible new channel launch. ITV Play will also be removed from Sky, but overnight participation TV programming on ITV1 including The Mint will remain.
ITV Play is just one of a number of participation channels running on UK multichannel services. However, the criticism concerning both questions and the handling of viewer responses has largely centred on the big four networks.