The ITN Nostalgia Thread

Non-Stop may have been used even longer had it not been for the Falklands War. Traditional folklore has it that they dropped it due to the war and replaced it with a more fitting theme tune. The war lasted from April to June 1982 so it is possible that the war made them finally realise that Non-Stop was no longer appropriate. I'm pretty certain the theme was changed in May or June 1982 and I guess it would have taken them a little while to arrange a new theme. Of course, even though the new theme was a rather basic synth piece, it does go down as an ITN classic. It was far more suitable for the 1980s than Non-Stop.

Here’s a challenge for your ITN archives, Rob: who presented the last “non-stop” bulletin and when?

Nope they're usually announced a few days before. I think normally overnight on the 29th/30th December

They are now, but up until very recently they were always announced straight after midnight on New Year's Eve. I've got the Christmas TV Times from, I think, 1987, when the first programme after midnight on the morning of New Year's Eve was a five minute news special revealing the honours list. I think there's also a clip on YouTube of the Beeb doing the same around that time.

Do you mean 'open ended' bulletin? Or the music?

Sorry, Newsroom. I meant the theme music. And welcome back! 👍

LOL! Thank you, sorry I didn't send a card. Quite enjoyed the vacay this time.

That is a tough question you tasked our resident ITN Guru with!

If I recall correctly, the weekend news was a bit unpredictable in those days. It was anybody’s guess who might turn up in the chair.

Notably, Martyn Lewis, Trevor McDonald, Alastair Stewart and Michael Brunson seemed to appear the most.

Then, again from a fading memory, once the music actually changed to that synth theme that Rob refers to, there was a settling down and Martyn Lewis was the most frequent of all before he moved towards News at Ten.

At one stage in the mid 00's when ITV was considering a full takeover of ITN, Charles Allen mooted the idea of returning the ITN brand to screens.

I've given this a good go and the best I can come up with is this:



That bulletin dates from Saturday 1st May 1982. I'm sure the change in theme music happened at some point in May/June 1982. There don't seem to be any closer clips here: https://www.tvark.org/?page=1930#/

So, the closest we can get - for now - is Selina Scott.

That music really is too jolly and bouncy for serious news, suprising it lasted over a quarter of a century.

What I like about that clip is that - set to Non-Stop - it looks like Admiral Woodward is out for a jolly nice weekend river cruise