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ITN call it first

(June 2001)

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AS
Asa Admin
At 2.44am this morning, ITV called Labour as the winner.

How on earth have ITV got the votes so quick?!

At the moment Sky News are lagging with 309 Labour votes, BBC with 315 and ITV past the post with 330+

Cheers, Asa

(Now I'm off to bed!)
KE
kevin
Asa,

Obviously, ITN haven't learned from their counterparts in the US!

ITN called seats before they were officially announced... Sky were the first true announcer of the election win, because they waited for 330 confirmed seats for Labour....

Cheers

Kev
CA
cat
Exactly Kev.
If you saw Adam Boulton, Ancram from the Tories said to him that ITV have just called the election and Boulton said that that is only because ITV call unofficial results.
ITV and the BBC to an extent only call results unofficially.
Didn't you notice the BBC's sudden jump from 290 up to about 300 in about 3 seconds!? they just unofficially called them all.

The BBC did not have 330 CONFIRMED seats and neither did ITN, only Sky actually truely annouced the election....
Will they ever learn??
CA
cat
Notice that the OFFICAL results (according to BBC Online) arrived at 2.58am exactly the time Sky broke it.
The BBC broke it 3 mins before, and ITV about 20.
SE
Square Eyes Founding member
I can't believe you, cheshirec going on about the OFFICIAL result, the fact is SKY were last to call it. Who cares if it was confirmed or not, it turned out to be correct. Is this the same cheshirec who is always talking about Sky being first by taking risks and running with stories whilst the BBC wait for them to be confirmed. The fact is ITV was quicker with the result by 20 minutes.
KE
kevin
Yes Sky take risks and they are very profound with their coverage, but they had no way of knowing that Exit Poll information was correct, and it was a great call by the executive producer to ONLY go with official results, which made Sky's coverage the best....

We all know what happened in America, and how many recounts did we have here, i think it was 6!

Also, there were wrong calls by ITN and BBC....

You guys are too quick to argue, but you never check these facts....

Cheers
Kev
:-(
A former member
As we've all come to realise, everybody here has their favourite with regards to news broadcasters - so whatever had happened last night/this morning, we could all put the 'spin' on events and use different arguments to justify who was best with the coverage.

As an example, if Sky had decided to go the other way and call results they felt sure of _before_ the official call, and managed to beat ITV/ITN and the BBC to announce the Labour victory, I'm sure Sky's followers would be hailing them for 'best coverage' and how bad ITV/ITN and the BBC were at not being first.

It's human nature!
CA
cat
The fact of the matter is ITV called it without it actually happening... essentially this is what is known as a LIE.

ITV called seats that had not even finished counting, even my sister (who was doing counting at Chester) was no where near to declaring a result when ITV called the result!

The result that ITV called wasn't even unofficial, it was just a lie!

ITV was not 'quicker with the result' there was no result when ITV called it!!!

It was simply fabricated by people in their 'Farce Centre'.

Sky do run with stories, take the Blunket annoucment as an example, they are the only ones reporting it at the moment.. but the fact is that is because it has been leaked to Sky.
The results of the election were not leaked to ITV!

They do not however make stories up, which is exactly what ITV did with the election night!
They simply guessed at many seats, gave labour a large majority than the other 2 networks to compensate for the fact that they would be making most of the results up and giving seats to labour than should have gone elsewhere.
The BBC did make some wrong calls yes, as did Sky and both networks were very quick to correct them.
ITV however simply called lots of seats that had were not even close to declaring as Labour Holds and then said that Labour had won the election!
CA
cat
cheshirec posted:
The fact of the matter is ITV called it without it actually happening... essentially this is what is known as a LIE.

ITV called seats that had not even finished counting, even my sister (who was doing counting at Chester) was no where near to declaring a result when ITV called the result for Chester!

The result that ITV called wasn't even unofficial, it was just a lie!

ITV was not 'quicker with the result' there was no result when ITV called it!!!

It was simply fabricated by people in their 'Farce Centre'.

Sky do run with stories, take the Blunket annoucment as an example, they are the only ones reporting it at the moment.. but the fact is that is because it has been leaked to Sky.
The results of the election were not leaked to ITV!

They do not however make stories up, which is exactly what ITV did with the election night!
They simply guessed at many seats, gave labour a large majority than the other 2 networks to compensate for the fact that they would be making most of the results up and giving seats to labour than should have gone elsewhere.
The BBC did make some wrong calls yes, as did Sky and both networks were very quick to correct them.
ITV however simply called lots of seats that had were not even close to declaring as Labour Holds and then said that Labour had won the election!
:-(
A former member
cheshirec posted:
The fact of the matter is ITV called it without it actually happening... essentially this is what is known as a LIE.


Having not seen ITV's broadcast (or any others for that matter, thank goodness - except for the excerpts on the news bulletins here) I can't comment on what was said.

There was a time, though, that such announcements were always made with the acknowledgement that they were 'predictions' - certainly not the same as lies.

I take it, then, that at _no_ time ITV stated that the constituency results they were offering were predictions.
CA
cat
Exactly.
I would have been perfectly happy if ITN had stated that the majority of results on the bar at the bottom of the screen were only what they were predicting and not official results.

If ITV had put EST. by the result then it would have been obvious it was a prediction.
However, what if it had all gone wrong?
This would have ruined the reputation of ITN and ITV as decent quality news providers and Sky and the BBC would no doubt rubbish their reputation.
It is sad to think that ITN put a value of 20 minutes on the reputation of their service.
:-(
A former member
It all went horribly(?!) wrong at the 1992 election with both the BBC and ITN underestimating the Tory majority in their exit polls. Sure, there were plenty of red faces (no pun intended), but nine years down the line does anybody really give a hoot - and the same for the US networks for their 'results'. There may well be caution at the next election but I bet they still call early.

I think, overall, it's best not to take it all that seriously, after all, the government gets in whatever happens!

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