ITV is hunting for entertainment formats with the potential to go viral as it seeks to change the tone of the channel with a raft of new weekday and Saturday teatime shows.

Head of entertainment Shu Greene said the commercial broadcaster should take inspiration from the online success of US talkshow The Late, Late Show With James Corden.

Speaking at the Broadcast Commissioning Forum, she said: “They had a strategy and a vision for what they wanted, and they succeeded. I think that ITV has to do the same. We need to put great people and resource into this area. “I don’t know anyone who actually watches [The Late, Late Show]. We all watch bitesize nuggets.”

Greene, who took up her role in April, and head of comedy entertainment Peter Davey have 33 projects on their slate and are focused on ramping up the channel’s “anonymous” weekday schedule.

The aim is not to “trial” shows for the weekend, Davey said, but to “create a new identity and refresh the channel” by pulling a mix of 30- and 60-minute entertainment shows into the week at 8pm and 9pm.

He highlighted Twofour’s time-travelling format This Time Next Year, which airs on Wednesdays at 8pm. “A lot of people said this is a Saturday night show in the middle of the week, which I was really pleased with,” he said.

ITV must replicate the BBC’s wealth of weekday formats, the former September Films exec added.

“There are so many BBC shows that play during the week that people know, that entertain people. We don’t have enough of those shows,” he said.

Davey also called for shows for ITV’s Saturday evening teatime slot with budgets of around £100,000 per half hour. “The idea is to get the family stuck on one channel; sitting down at teatime and settled into the evening before the bigger shows,” he explained.

The channel has high hopes for upcoming late-night stripped comedy offering The Nightly Show (w/t), produced by Andrew O’Connor’s indie Cats on the Roof Media.

It is believed that producers are currently preparing their own viral segments in the vein of Corden’s Carpool Karaoke and Drop The Mic strands.

The show is due to launch in the new year, with 40 stripped episodes going out at 10pm, which will shake up the schedule, according to Davey.

“If you look at the schedule, it hasn’t really changed since David Liddiment’s day,” he said. “No one’s ever done [a nightly stripped comedy show] so we’ll give it a go and see if there’s an appetite for it. You never know until you try and it will have quite a significant change on the tone of the channel.”