ITV3 is a TV channel which launched on 1st November 2004, mostly airing classic TV shows from the ITV archives.
The launch of ITV3 led to the abrupt close-down of Plus (formerly Granada Plus), so that ITV3 could acquire its EPG position on the Sky platform. This ended its run of Classic Coronation Street with Episode 3657 (9th February 1994), as Coronation Street repeats did not transfer to the new channel.
Nearly thirteen years later, on 2nd October 2017, ITV3 began their own run of Classic Coronation Street, beginning with Episode 2587 (15th January 1986), the first appearance of Alan Bradley. Two episodes are shown daily from Monday to Friday, beginning at 2:50pm and repeated the following morning at 6:00am. Episodes are shown mostly unedited in 35-minute slots, unlike the previous Granada Plus run which featured edits to fit into their 30-minute slot that contained more advertising space than existed when the episodes were originally transmitted, though occasionally the Plus edits were aired instead. In addition to this, cuts are made to suit a daytime audience, as opposed to the mid-evening slot the episodes were originally transmitted in. Cuts made by ITV3 include some offensive language (including some of the transphobic abuse aimed at Hayley Patterson when she first came out about being transgender in 1998) and violent scenes (such as Jim McDonald beating his wife Liz in Episode 3980 (28th February 1996), which was heavily edited).
On 15th November 2019, the ITV3 run reached Episode 3658 (11th February 1994), overtaking the end point of the Granada Plus repeats. With the exception of repeats aired within the week of original transmission (both on the various ITV regions and, from December 1998, ITV2) it was the first time that this and subsequent episodes had been repeated. The extremely abrupt nature of Plus's closure meant that episodes had continued to be edited in advance, so ITV3 viewers still saw these for a while afterwards.
In January 2020, the weekly omnibus of contemporary Coronation Street episodes transferred from ITV2 to ITV3 for the first time, although omnibus editions were suspended in April due to the COVID-19 pandemic stopping production, resulting in the episodes shown per week halving from six to three. Instead, the individual episodes were rerun back-to-back in the same early-morning timeslot. When the six-episodes-a-week pattern was restored in September of that year, the omnibus returned.
ITV3+1, a timeshift channel which shows the same output but one hour later was launched on 30th October 2006. This also airs the same Coronation Street episodes as the main channel but in the time-shifted slot.
At the very close of 2021, ITV2 dropped the individual repeats of episodes and only showed a Saturday omnibus repeat which in itself transferred back from to that channel from ITV3, leaving the latter with its regular showing of classic episodes.