A second network feed, under a third name
- 773videos
- 328Ksubscribers
- ~116Mlifetime views
- ~150,000views per video, lifetime
Public counts for the channel, as of Sep 2026.
They describe the channel as it stands today, under the name it carries now, and not my output: most of what it holds was published outside my time on it.
The number worth looking at is the last one. Around 150,000 views per video is the highest ratio of any channel on this site, on the second-smallest catalogue. That is what a channel looks like when it is not trying to be a catalogue at all.
What is left when the hits have their own channels
A network channel sells the programme first and the channel second. This one had to do that for programmes that were already being sold somewhere else.
The main ITV channel has the widest remit and no single show to lean on. ITV2 has the opposite problem in a sharper form: a young, entertainment-led remit, and its biggest title running its own channel down the corridor. Love Island is an ITV2 show. It is also, on this site, a separate page with 2 million subscribers.
So the feed cannot be a highlights reel of the network's best week - the best week has already gone out somewhere with a bigger audience for it. What is left is everything that does not have a home: the shows too small for their own channel, the formats between series, and the parts of the big titles that the show channel was never going to run.
That is a harder brief than it sounds, and it is the reason the views-per-video number above is what it is. A channel that only publishes when it has a reason to publish ends up with fewer videos, each carrying more.
A show channel knows what it is for. A second network channel has to decide, every week, what it is for that week.
A narrower audience, and a licence the main channel did not have
ITV2 was the cheeky one. That is a remit, not a tone of voice, and it changes what the feed can do.
The main network channel had to be recognisable to everybody, which meant nothing on it could be aimed too squarely at anyone. ITV2 was the opposite. Younger, entertainment-led, carrying things the main feed would not run: Family Guy sat on this channel, and a fair amount of what worked here was a shade more taboo than the front door of the network could be.
That is easier in one way and harder in another. Easier because there is a person to picture on the other end, and a title can be written for them rather than for a general audience. Harder because a specific audience notices immediately when you get it wrong. A clip that is nearly right for everybody passes on the main channel. Here it does not.
- 00:00Straight to the joke. A specific audience notices padding immediately.
- 00:04Tone set in the first cut, not in the title.
- 00:10The bit that would not run on the main feed. It is the reason this channel exists.
- 00:15Callback, if there is one worth making.
- 00:20Leave early. Better short than nearly right.
A schematic of how a clip on this channel opens, not a reading off any particular video.
What the counts did across that stretch
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The ITV2 channel went from around 14,000 subscribers to over 28,000 while I was running it.
Archived captures of the channel page: earlier · later. The 328,000 is the channel as it stands today, not my output.
Both are figures YouTube itself displayed on the channel’s own page, on those dates, preserved by an archive nobody involved controls. A channel doubling off a base that small is not the same kind of claim as a channel doubling off a large one, and I am not going to dress it up as one.
I ran that channel in partnership with ITV. What I did was the editing, the packaging and the publishing: what went up, when, how it was titled and how it sat in a feed alongside everything else the network was putting out that week.
This channel has a different name now too
ITV2 had its own YouTube channel and it is one of the channels I ran. It has since been renamed, and it is not the only one on this site that has - Saturday Night Takeaway’s channel was renamed as well. Nothing was deleted in either case: the catalogue is intact and the subscriber count carried over, which is why the 328,000 above belongs to the channel as it stands today rather than to ITV2 as it was.