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ITV OnDigital/ITV Digital almost bankrupted ITV in 2002, when it went bust.

The dire financial situation at ITV caused ITV to re-evaluate their team, and possibly pushed them to hire Paul Marquess to improve the profitability of their drama department. As earlier outlined, the tumultuous shuffling between Producers before Marquess began his run illustrated the disarray in the network around the time of the collapse.

The man in charge of ITV's Communications Security network said that besides the smartcard hack, ITV Digital's problems were solvable with "good management". For years, THEM. has alleged that ITV's poor management contributed to the crippling of The Bill.

There is no doubt that ITV's programming on ITV Digital was substandard, that it wasn't as good as attracting customers as Sky. Nevertheless, the ability for people who would otherwise pay for the service to get the service for free, had no doubt contributed to OnDigital's financial woes.

On BBC's Panorama Program, allegations were outlined that an arm of News Corporation (who share among other things, the same legal representation) financed hackers that cracked the smartcards used in ITV Digital's boxes.

The smartcard technology was sold to ITV as "uncrackable" by Canal +, the French Communications firm.

It has been alleged by the BBC that the code of the cracked smartcards were then posted on the internet, enabling the wholesale manufacture of the cards, with the blackmarket cards contributing to the collapse of OnDigital.