Ideal World

Ideal World has its origins in the 1980s as a mail order company selling products via national press adverts and consumer exhibitions. The company was then called Wrightway Marketing and was run by Paul Wright and his business partner Val Kaye.

Ideal World launched on 17 April 2000 on digital satellite from studios in Peterborough.[4]

On 6 March 2001, the facility at Peterborough was completely destroyed by fire. The channel was back broadcasting within weeks from various temporary facilities whilst the main building was rebuilt: it was not fully operational again until September 2002.[5]

Ideal World originally had Steve Whatley, Paul Lavers and Debbie Flint as the three main faces of the channel, but behind the scenes it would help launch the careers of directors such as Brendan Sheppard arguably one of the most successful whose career would go on to include shows like Doctor Who and who was directing the night of the fire also Gareth Knowles, Yvonne Ackrill and Daniel Wilson who also would go on to direct shows such as Emmerdale. Mark Thatcher was installed as Head of Production leading producers such as Lizz Brain, Linda Cooper and Lesley Hawksley who would go on to be one of the longest serving if less competent producers.

On 18 April 2003, Ideal World's first sister channel Create and Craft was launched and on 1 January 2004 Ideal Vitality started broadcasting. This was originally a channel from Goldshield, "Goldshield Vitality", for which Ideal Shopping Direct provided the studio recording and broadcast facilities. However, by the end of 2005 Goldshield pulled out of the venture. Ideal Shopping then broadcast a similar channel focusing on health and beauty products from Ideal's range, under the 'Vitality' name. Ideal Vitality was then wound down and replaced with highlights from past Ideal World shows, the channel being renamed on the Sky EPG as Ideal World 2. Ideal World 3, then followed, repeating Ideal World 2 shows.

On 23 April 2004, Ideal World began broadcasting on Freeview on Channel 22, a position it retained until 19 January 2022 when the channel traded places with another shopping TV channel, 'TJC', moving in the process to Channel 50. A week later, a Freeview re-shuffle moved the channel to number 51 on the EPG.

Jewellery Vault, a falling-auction style jewellery channel was launched on 1 July 2005 broadcasting live 5pm-1am and subsequently closed in July 2006 due to it not covering its operating costs.

On 3 March 2010, Ideal World 2 was renamed Ideal Extra and Ideal World 3 was renamed Ideal & More. On the same day, Ideal Extra launched on Freeview.

In 2011, the company was delisted from the AIM stock market, after acquisition by Village Ventures' investment fund, Inflexion Private Equity. The company was subsequently sold to The Blackstone Group, in 2015.[6]

In May 2013, Ideal World became the subject of a BBC Watchdog investigation after viewer complaints about non-delivery of goods and allegedly poor quality of some products.[7] Customers also alleged that complaints to Ideal World customer services either went unanswered or were not satisfactory. The Watchdog investigation followed claims by the Daily Mirror online that complaints about Ideal World submitted to its blog had "passed the 100 mark".[8] Ideal World was acquired by Aurelius Group, in July 2018,[9] Aurelius originally owned Bid shopping and its subsidiary, Bid tv, between 2009 and 2013.[10]

• idealworld.tv
• Create and Craft with Ideal World