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ITV Nightscreen is a scheduled programme on the ITV television network that was broadcast from 1998 to 2021. It consisted of a sequence of animated pages of information about ITV's upcoming programmes, features and special events, with easy listening music in the background. The programme was used to fill the station's overnight downtime, where a closedown would have once been used at the end of programmes. The programme was generally shown every night. However, on ITV's additional channels which only began broadcasting in the digital era, the amount of Teleshopping affected how much Nightscreen was broadcast.
Nightscreen was first broadcast on 14 January 1998, and consisted of teletext pages taken from the ITV regional teletext services, with interstitial teletext-based animations in a similar style to the former FourText. From 2003 the screens were produced using Scala InfoChannel3. In early 2009, updated systems were installed with the latest version of Scala5, with a dual redundant system to counter any issues of service. In April 2012, the system was upgraded again to a newer version of Scala5. The Scala system was provided by Beaver Group, and the programme was produced by Gower Creative Communications with soundtracks provided by KPM Music and BMG Production Music. This, amongst other minor presentational changes, allowed compatibility of the service to be transmitted in for the first time, as opposed to .
In February 1999, STV started carrying Nightscreen as a programming filler during its overnight programming strand 'Night Time TV' (run by STV Group and jointly aired between the Scottish and Grampian regions at the time), whilst sister station Grampian had already carried Nightscreen as a filler in their programming schedules by this time too.
ITV Channel Television previously ran its own version of the service entitled Channel Nightscreen consisting of local news headlines and programming information. Channel Nightscreen was axed towards the end of 2011 shortly after ITV plc brought Channel Television.
In April 2010, STV launched its own Scottish night-time service, The Nightshift, broadcast in the STV Central region and consisting of programming highlights, news, competitions and viewers texts and emails read out by a live out-of-vision presenter. STV North continued to broadcast ITV Nightscreen until July 2010, when The Nightshift was extended to the North region. The programme included regional news opt-outs for the four STV sub-regions: Aberdeen & the North, Dundee & Tayside, Edinburgh & the East and Glasgow & the West. STV dropped The Nightshift from its schedules in June 2015, meaning Nightscreen was extended on the station.
In October 2021, the programme was replaced by Unwind with ITV (branded as Unwind with STV on STV in Central Scotland and North of Scotland).
Nightscreen was also broadcast on ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and ITVBe. Availability depended on how much unused time was left, and could sometimes last for as little as five minutes as teleshopping is shown on these channels. There was a different music tracklist for each channel, however, upcoming programmes on only the ITV network were shown. CITV did not use the service since the channel closed down at 6:00pm (later 9:00pm). Although not an ITV-branded channel, ITV's defunct Men & Motors channel (closed 1 April 2010) would in its later years carry the filler from the close of programming until 6:00am.
In its early years, Nightscreen would often begin at around 4am and finish before the . The length of the programme varied depending on the overnight schedules. Some ITV regions didn't broadcast Nightscreen initially, including STV, who opted to continue with their own service entitled Scottish Night Time, Meridian, who opted to continue with their own Freescreen service, and Central, who opted to broadcast their own local programming within that slot. In the Yorkshire and Tyne Tees regions, Nightscreen ended at 4:30am to allow both networks to opt-out for their one hour regional Jobfinder programme.
In December 2005, three months before the now defunct ITV Play began transmitting, a quiz show entitled Quizmania began broadcasting in the early hours on ITV. Subsequent programmes that followed were The Mint, Make Your Play and Glitterball. This resulted in Nightscreen being pushed back to just a half-hour service between 5am and 5:30am.
In 2008, largely as a result of widespread scandal surrounding phone-ins, ITV Play was permanently axed, meaning that Nightscreen began broadcasting from around 4:30am. In 2010, ITV started airing The Zone for two hours, a gaming and shopping programme block, usually airing from 12:30am to 2:30am, leaving Nightscreen often cut back to as little as an hour and sometimes removed from ITV's schedule altogether. As well as providing focus on upcoming programmes, films and TV listings, it also used to offer entertainment news, sports news, cooking tips, recipes and fact files of characters from famous ITV shows such as Emmerdale and Coronation Street.
From 1 August 2019, home shopping channel Ideal World began simulcasting during part of the overnight period on ITV. Consequently, the two bursts of Nightscreen on UTV and Channel then ceased as these regions then followed network scheduling due to there being no restrictions about their showing Ideal World, unlike the previous gaming programmes. STV began simulcasting Ideal World from September 2021, meaning Nightscreen was only shown once per night on the channel, instead of twice for the final days of it airing
From January 2021, ITV started airing FYI Extra at 3:00am for 15minutes daily. This meant that Nightscreen was reduced from 75minutes to 60minutes.
On 10 April 2021, due to the death of Prince Philip, Nightscreen was broadcast continually from 12:15am to 6:00am without a break, on Channel 3 throughout the United Kingdom and Channel Islands.
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