Yeah the political correspondents/editors have done some of the most swaps over the years. Off the top of my head I can think of Nick Robinson (BBC to ITN to BBC, I think) and John Sergeant (BBC to ITN) as well. But there may have been more? Laura Kuenssberg did the 'boomerang' like Nick Robinson - BBC-ITN-BBC.
I guess these things are the same as goes on in any industry. You have colleagues who are ambitious with little to no company loyalty and will move at the drop of a hat to further their career - and at the other end of the spectrum you have those who value familiarity, safety and loyalty to a company.
I think it was pretty much accepted that Robinson and Kuenssberg both used ITN as a stepping stone to a bigger role at the Beeb - ITN provided more opportunities on screen and another line on the CV, plus it was useful experience at a different company for two people who I think had up until then spent their entire career at the BBC.
That happens quite a lot, behind the scenes as well. The obvious example is Mark Thompson, he was considered a future Director-General pretty much from day one, as he moved up from producer to editor to controller and then executive at the Beeb, before moving to C4 and then returning as Director-General - the C4 stint was a valuable one as it gave him experience at a commercial operation, which was a good thing to have on your CV when you were going for the big job at the Beeb.
think it was a case of a new editor, wanting a new face. Coupled with a desire from the top to change the style of the bulletin.
Tom Bradby's always been highly rated there though by the looks of it - hardly come out of nowhere - political editor, royal editor, so I imagine was in a good position to build allies and lobby for that job. Also in the right place at the right time.
That's true enough, television doesn't work on military lines where you have to be promoted up the ranks - it so often depends on people being fast-tracked if the bosses think they have potential. In Will Wyatt's book he talks about how the Beeb's light entertainment department used to work strictly along those lines, you would start as an AFM and then move up the ranks to Floor Manager, then Director, then Producer and so on. He said that worked well in some aspects, but not in others, because it meant all the Producers were really old when they got there, and people in more minor roles would come up with ideas, ask if they could produce them and were told they couldn't because they needed to work their way up, so they'd promptly leave for somewhere they could, so they lost a lot of talent. So in the end they abandoned that idea, in favour of a more flexible approach.
So in this instance you can suggest that all the newsreaders should work their way up through reporter, editor, weekend bulletins and so on, but that means by the time they get to News at Ten they're all about the same age. And some people are good number twos but don't have the spark that makes them a number one, and people get rewarded just for hanging around. It's quite a bad example because he wasn't very good but it's like when Stuart Attwell got fast-tracked to becoming a Premier League referee a few years ago, because it was considered important they had younger people doing it.
A lot of the time they're a bit hamstrung by agents and the like as well. One example is when Jeff Stelling was about to defect from Sky to ITV in 2005, he'd got as far as handing in his notice, but Sky wanted to keep him and so they offered him the job of number two presenter on live Premier League games as well. Of course, they already had someone doing that job in Ian Payne, who was promptly got rid of. But they wanted to keep Jeff so that's what it took.
It could well have been that Tom Bradby - or his agent - said during contract negotations "I'll stay as long as you let me do News at Ten", and if ITN wanted to keep him, that's what they offered him. The fact they had other people already doing that is neither here nor there, really, they can be sorted out later.
I wouldn't say Rageh Omaar was an unusual hire, he was a very well-known journalist, during the second Gulf War he was a very famous face. He had no previous ITN experience, but viewers don't just watch ITN exclusively and they knew him from other places. It's the same with Tom Bradby, really, he hadn't put in the hours on minor bulletins but he was a very familiar face on News at Ten already as a reporter. And it allowed them to make a major change to the style of the bulletin and illustrate to the audience things were different which you probably wouldn't have had if it had featured the same old faces.
I was never really convinced with Mark Austin as a newsreader compared to a reporter either, really.
