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Thanks for sharing - extremely insightful in how they planned through the process of launching the news channel - and the even more interesting part; the proliferation of news being spread throughout multiple mediums, something that has indeed become commonplace.

It never gained traction of course with the competition of Sky and the BBC, and while ITV certainly attempted to make it come into its own with sublime news coverage, their commitment dropped to the bottom, of course.

Still, a ever so insightful, and interesting documentary to watch.

A lot of very interesting things to note from that documentary. Very interesting to see the pilots with the softer music, indeed the very first pilot done from the outgoing ITV News set at the time with Shulie Ghosh.

Also at 17:30, who is that presenting with John Suchet on the Lunchtime News? A face I don't think I've seen before.

I also was not aware that Carol Barnes was one of the launch presenter as she appears in the press photograph at 24:15. I knew she returned as one of the legacy faces of the ITV News Channel during the Iraq War in 2003 but didn't know she was there from launch.

And very comical to see their efforts of bringing on demand news in video on the ITN website, in RealPlayer format about the size of a postage stamp. And their efforts to produce news for WAP phones and PalmPilots. How times change!

The presenter with John at 17:30 is Ros Childs, she used to be a regular ITN fill in presenter and was on the NC a fair bit too, she now presents the midday news for ABC in Australia.

I've commented on the video and it is a fascinating watch, it's a bit like ITN could see into the future, but they were quite early and it never caught on. What also didn't help was ITN don't have deep pockets, nor did NTL.

Live streaming Real Player clips was just a no go on a 56k connection.

Also taken from my Twitter timeline, three minutes of the "disastrous pilot" (in Paul Merton's words) for Have I Got News for You, originally John Lloyd's Newsround. Those of you who saw the South Bank Show on John Lloyd back in 2014 will remember seeing a brief clip from this:



There appear to be two VT clocks at the start just to increase the geekiness.

Kind of amazing that elements like the revolving boards have been there since the very start!

There was a second pilot hosted by Sandi Toksvig I believe.

Here's the original source of that video with some background:

http://ian-partridge.com/hignfy.html

Long-forgotten TV-Hell-esque shown-once-on-BBC1-at-11pm-on-a-Friday-in-2001 clip show, TV's Finest Failures!



It isn't TV Hell, although there are some recycled clips (a la Mainly For Men), and Phill Jupitus is a rather resistable host, but there are some amusing clips in it, including the adult Fun House and the pilot for Calendar Countdown ("And now Robina will go to the fruit machine!"). I had thought it included some Nationwide stuff, but it turns out I was confusing it with a virtually identical show that also went out around that time called I Can't Believe We Watched That - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/17fc9a727d5841bdb962cfe8fededdc1

We had to get our archive kicks where we could find them in those days, but something I'd love someone to upload to YouTube is either episode of Crystal Balls, two clip shows presented by Griff Rhys Jones in 1998, which were based around crap predictions on old telly, and I remember being particularly amusing.

The Black and White Minstrels - Halls of Fame - BBC1 - 4th December 1984

Yep, it was between her and Deayton: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jun/16/sandi-toksvig-bbc-denied-me-host-role-because-im-a-woman

She did appear as Ians team mate in the first episode though

Quite amazing that Hislop & Merton have been there since the very first pilot- has anyone else ever lasted so long on a panel show?

There haven't been many panel shows that have lasted that long, really. You could suggest Frank Muir on Call My Bluff, My Word and My Music, the latter two with Denis Norden, but even those haven't lasted as long as HIGNFY,

A Question Of Sport's been on air since 1970, though I don't think anyone's lasted anywhere near 27 years on it.