ITV4 launch night to proceed on Sky

ITV is pulling its Men & Motors channel off Sky for tomorrow night (Tuesday) only to enable viewers to watch the launch of ITV4.

The new male-oriented station had faced a delay of almost a week before it could debut on the largest multichannel service in the country: Sky had claimed that it could not allocate the channel its own EPG number until November 7.

As a last-minute measure, ITV4 will replace Men & Motors on EPG 136 for tomorrow night only before formally launching on EPG 120 next Monday.

In the meantime, Sky viewers will still be able to view ITV4 by adding the channel manually. To do so, press services, then 4 (system setup) and 4 (add channels). Enter the frequency 10.758, a polarisation of V, a symbol rate of 22.0 (use the left/right arrow buttons) and an FEC of 5/6, then select 'Find channels'. From the list that appears, select 10072 and press the yellow button, then select to store. The channel will now be accessible via services, then the 'Other Channels' menu.

ITV4's launch night hitch onto Sky is not unprecedented: last year, ITV3 was given the greenlight only hours before its debut while ITV2 faced a wait of more than three years to appear on Sky.