ITV is gearing up to make 1,000 hours of archive content available to rent online this summer when it finally launches its micropayments system.

Fru Hazlitt, ITV’s managing director of commercial and online, updated an industry conference today on the broadcaster’s much anticipated - and delayed - plans to charge for VoD content.

The commercial broadcaster will roll out a pay version of ITV Player to a 5,000-strong consumer research panel over the next few weeks before launching a beta version nationally - potentially by the end of August or early September.

Once launched, users will be able to catch-up on the past seven days of ITV shows as usual, but will be offered the opportunity to register to extend this free catch-up window to 30 days.

Viewers will have to pay for any programming beyond this 30-day period and ITV is currently trialling a number of different pricing models, which will be realised using MGT’s Pay Wizard service.

Renting content

It is thought that renting a single episode of a show, such as The Only Way is Essex, could cost around 50p for a month, while whole series may be made available for between £2 and £4. All purchased content will be ad free.

ITV’s pay platform will be rolled out with around 1,000 hours of programming that will initially be dominated by ITV Studios properties.

Hazlitt added that ITV has struck a deal with All3Media’s Lime Pictures to make all four series of TOWIE available on the VoD service for the first time.

ITV is hopeful that drama will prove popular, with its production arm’s catalogue including crime classics Morse, A Touch Of Frost and Prime Suspect. Other genres of archive content will also be pushed on ITV Player.

The VoD platform currently attracts 5m active users a month and once viewers are registered, the service will use algorithms to recommend unexplored content.

Online premieres

Beyond catch-up services, ITV is likely to premiere new episodes of dramas on the relaunched VoD player.

This means viewers will be given the opportunity to watch the second instalment of a show like Downton Abbey online, immediately after they have seen the series debut on air.

“We think this will add a lot of value to programming and make it more powerful,” Hazlitt said.

Bespoke content, such as web-only spin-offs of Coronation Street, could be made available to rent on ITV Player once the new proposition is more established, but this is not currently a priority.

Introducing a micropayments system is a key element of ITV’s five-year plan to secure half of its revenue from sources other than traditional advertising.

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