It is run by ITV plc and is responsible for the regional news service and programmes made principally for the area by the UTV production team.

In 1953, the BBC began its first television broadcasts in Northern Ireland, from a temporary relay transmitter in Glencairn that was hastily set up in time for the coronation of Elizabeth II.

[7] With a reluctant MacQuitty as the franchise's founding managing director,[8] the newly-formed group, Ulster Television Limited, set out to launch the new station on Halloween 1959, giving them less than a year to construct facilities and hire needed personnel within a tight budget.

[9] The group would purchase Havelock House, then an abandoned linen factory on the Ormeau Road, for £17,000 and convert it into a television studio complex.

[12] Ulster Television went on air at 4:45pm on 31 October 1959, with Laurence Olivier (then of Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III fame) being the first person to appear.

[13] During its first minutes on air, it featured children engaging in Halloween festivities, an introduction to Northern Ireland "in words and music" by Richard Hayward, and prerecorded messages from ITV talent.

[21] UTV was originally scheduled to take a service provided by Central in Birmingham, but a late minute decision to switch to Granada Television's sustaining feed, Night Time, led to a month-long delay.

[citation needed] The former UTV Media group was restructured and rebranded as the Wireless Group, retaining its radio assets until June 2016, when the company was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.[24] On 11 July 2016, ITV plc announced that was selling the UTV Ireland service to Virgin Media Ireland for €10 million.

[citation needed] UTV was also the last company in the network to retain in-vision continuity links, where the duty announcer appeared on-camera to introduce the evening's programmes.

In later years, local continuity was generally restricted to evenings with in-vision links presented at weekends by senior announcer Julian Simmons.

The last live in-vision announcement was made by Simmons at 11.15 pm on Sunday 16 October 2016, marking the end of 57 years of local transmission.

Two of UTV's longest-serving announcers, Julian Simmons and Gillian Porter, were retained to pre-record out-of-vision continuity – with Aidan Browne providing relief cover – until 2 April 2020, when the channel began taking ITV-branded network presentation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[citation needed] In November 2020, it was reported the announcing team had left UTV following a decision to switch permanently to network continuity.

[citation needed] A new bumper with the UTV logo and the tagline "Part of ITV" was also shown for a short time before some – but not all – commercial breaks.

[93] In common with the rest of the ITV Network, the station aired specially composed signature tunes as part of its daily start-up routine.

It originally featured on The British Isles, an LP of orchestral arrangements of traditional and characteristic national tunes of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

[98] UTV Ireland was broadcast from the company's Dublin base at Macken House and carried a large amount of ITV's networked programming (including Emmerdale and Coronation Street, previously broadcast by TV3) alongside some bespoke programming, including Ireland Live, a twice nightly national news programme airing at 5.30 pm and 10 pm.