For a number of years, it had the largest audience share after the five analogue terrestrial stations, a claim now held by its sister service ITV3[2] both of which are freely available to a majority of households.

and Bob's Burgers; repeats of recently aired episodes of soap operas and other entertainment programming from ITV such as Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Family Fortunes and Catchphrase; 60-second entertainment news bulletin FYI Daily, which airs in-between films; original comedy such as Celebrity Juice and Plebs, and reality formats such as Big Brother and Love Island.

While strictly speaking this space belonged to each regional contractor for use within their own region, ITV had undergone a series of buyouts earlier in the decade; the three players operating the majority of the network, Granada, Carlton, and United News & Media, jointly launched ITV2 in 1998 to be broadcast to most of the country as a uniform service.

Much of the original content in its launch schedule was current affairs related programming fronted by ITV newscasters.

There were repeats of popular ITV programmes including Midsomer Murders, Inspector Morse, A Touch of Frost, Heartbeat, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Gladiators, CD:UK, Don't Try This at Home, Trisha, This Morning, Loose Women and My Wonderful Life, American acquisitions such as Judge Judy, The Jerry Springer Show, The Late Show with David Letterman and Maggie Winters, omnibus editions of ITV soaps Emmerdale, Coronation Street, The Bill and Home and Away and a Saturday football results service called Football First, which was promoted to ITV1 in 2001 (while maintaining an ITV2 slot) and rebranded as The Goal Rush.

In June 2004, ITV plc announced that they were going to double the channel's programme budget and would add more American series and movies.

The new look co-incided with a lineup of new programmes including Celebrity Juice, CelebAir, The Fashion Show and No Heroics.

The channel had already been (and remains) available to Irish viewers on free-to-air satellite for some time, however it is still not listed in the Sky electronic programme guide.

On 23 March 2015, it was announced that ITV2 had acquired the rights to broadcast US animated comedy Family Guy, which had previously been airing on competing youth channel BBC Three.

However, ITV4 was an evening only service and normally ITV2 would broadcast weekday daytime sports, including games from the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

In November 2021, the channel moved into the true crime genre with The Social Media Murders, a three-part documentary series with a different case examined every night, over three days.

[18] In March 2022, ITV announced that their new reality game show Loaded in Paradise, which sees teams in Greece trying to win a chance of spending the prize pot of 50,000 euros, and Tell Me Everything, a mental health themed drama series, would be two of the first ITV2 shows to debut on their new streaming service ITVX before getting terrestrial slots, which eventually came in April 2023 and June 2023 respectively.

[28] All American was unsuccessful in its 7pm slot and so after a month of consistently low ratings, it was moved to around 2am each morning, with Bob's Burgers returning on 4 July 2022.

After another three months of low ratings, this decision was eventually reversed, and Bob's Burgers returned to ITV2 for a second time in April 2023.

In August 2022, the channel axed its Katherine Ryan presented dating show Ready To Mingle[31] after some episodes in the first series received ratings as low as 60,000 viewers, and picked up the rights to the Big Brother format, launching a teaser trailer for its return to British TV during the Love Island final.

On 8 October 2023, Big Brother made its debut on ITV, with a special launch show simulcast on both ITV1 & ITV2 watched by more than 2.5 million viewers.

[39] Before Love Island's successful return, the highest rated show on the channel was episode 7.01 of Celebrity Juice, starring Phillip Schofield, on 9 February 2012.

[43] In a 2009 episode of Screenwipe, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker criticised the channel's programming as being "nihilistic worthlessness" and called it "a monument to cultural death" and "frighteningly meaningless.

[48][49] In the wake of the scandal, Stewart Lee criticised O'Reilly's Newsnight apology and said "what kind of person gets banned from ITV2?

[50] Writing for The Intercept, Nikita Mazurov compared the action to George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, from which the series Big Brother takes its name, arguing that the editing of the episode represented a "key tenant of the novel: old media being edited and original versions destroyed, leaving no trace of any modification having taken place.

[60] Original HD programming includes entertainment shows, Britain's Got More Talent, The Xtra Factor and I'm a Celebrity: Extra Camp; original drama such as the third and fourth series of Secret Diary of a Call Girl; and acquired content including The Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl and a range of movies.

The programming consisted primarily of simulcasts with the ITV2 station shown in England, Wales and the Scottish Borders, although they did also use archive broadcasts from UTV.

The channel received a new lime green logo, chosen as ITV thought it had a young fresh feel to it.

The channel's yellow and blue idents changed to black and white, to match the club's colours.

As part of the refresh, the logo is now coloured pink and uses idents that are cross-used across ITV1, ITV3, ITV4, and ITVBe with different views which reflect the channel's image and programming output.

and Bob's Burgers; repeats of recently aired episodes of soap operas and other entertainment programming from ITV such as Coronation Street, Emmerdale, and Catchphrase; 60-second entertainment news bulletin FYI Daily, which airs in-between films; original comedy such as Celebrity Juice and Plebs, and reality formats such as Big Brother and Love Island.