[Jon]

Having a hard time trying to justify that "confusion between the master brand and the channel" argument.

Their justification made a lot of sense. They've had brand campaigns in the past like Get Britain Talking that have technically been a campaign from ITV as a company but viewers have perceived it as being a campaign related to ITV1 the channel. The need to distinguish more between ITV the channel and ITVX will be a lot more important as they make streaming their priority over broadcast as a company.

Their audience research found half of viewers still referred to it as ITV1, interestingly. Guess it's no different to people still referring to it as 'Granada' or 'Yorkshire' or whatever. If that was the era you watched it the most you're more likely to use that brand. No plans for a promo for the name change like they did way back when. Looks like it's just going to happen without drawing too much attention to it.

To be honest it sounds like they concocted the survey to get the answers that they wanted. Of course people are going to connect a campaign people are most likely to have seen on ITV [1] with that channel, I don’t think anyone at home is really thinking that the other channels are opposed to people having conversations with each other. I also doubt as many as they say would refer to ‘ITV 1’ in casual conversation unless it was to distinguish it from the other channels. 

All that said I think the rebranding to ITV 1 at this time makes sense because as you say it very much sounds like the they want ITV X to be the main offering where you get all the content from the channels and more.