Owen Thomas said the new look will launch at 5:30 tomorrow morning with Rachel McTavish. He said that she was the new presenter of the programme and that he would see us later in the week, is he maybe going to do weekends on ITV1 or still the Mrning News.
I am impressed ITV news continues to be a force to be reckoned with considering its budget continues to be squeezed. ITV news budget... 1991 - £80 million, 2000 - £45 million, 2001 - £36 million. ITV used to have correspondents based in South-East Asia, Moscow, Australia, Ireland. They now only have four permanent journalists based across the world. I think this is a shame but considering budgets, it's not surprising I suppose.
They actually have five, Jerusalem, Bangkok, Washington, Johannesbourg and Brussels. They only had a correspondent in Australia because Libby Weiner happened to go and live there, Mark Webster will continue to report from Ireland whenever necessary, and other places are covered ok. I do agree though that it would be wise to put a correspondent in their bureaux in Moscow, Beijing and Belfast, but apparently the reason for not having a correspondent in Moscow was because of the coverage of Iraq, and as no correspondent appears to be in Iraq anymore perhaps one will be appointed. Also correspondents are needed in California and Tokyo.
Please don't compare that picture of the ITV News Studio to the BBC News Studio... the ITV one wipes the floor over the BBC one, which looks like Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen designed.
I do like the BBC News 24 set, but the one that they use on BBC One is, in my opinion, very dire. What I hate most of all is the floor which looks exactly like Changing Roms have done it, as said above. Rip up the nice floor and sand the floor boards... ugh.
I am impressed ITV news continues to be a force to be reckoned with considering its budget continues to be squeezed. ITV news budget... 1991 - £80 million, 2000 - £45 million, 2001 - £36 million. ITV used to have correspondents based in South-East Asia, Moscow, Australia, Ireland. They now only have four permanent journalists based across the world. I think this is a shame but considering budgets, it's not surprising I suppose.
£36 million frankly isn't good enough for a network with a terrestial channel with a reach the same as the BBC. £36 million is around the same amount that Sky News runs on, and I think I am right that Sky News now has more correspondents and reporters than ITV News has soely (that is, without having to rely on regional ITV1 correspondents and reporters). It seems the BBC spend more on News 24 than ITV News spend on their whole operation, that is very embarrasing. Even with the licence fee argument, ITV should be giving ITN much more money, and can do that, rather than spend money on trash shows like "Celebrities under Pressure".
Sky News has more international correspondents than ITV News now, especially with the recent opening of the Indian bureaux, which adds to the ones in Washington, Dublin, Jerusalem, Brussels, Johannesburg, Moscow and Bejing, with some of those bureaux having two correspondents compared to ITV's having only one. Add to that the resources of effectively an Australian bureaux in Sky News Austraila, and FOX News in the U.S., and you can see ITV News is outgunned by both BBC News and Sky News. This simply is not good enough, especially as ITV News has a 24-hour news channel AND network bulletins on ITV1.
Owen Thomas said the new look will launch at 5:30 tomorrow morning with Rachel McTavish. He said that she was the new presenter of the programme and that he would see us later in the week, is he maybe going to do weekends on ITV1 or still the Mrning News.
Indeed he did, maybe we might see him on the News Channel during daylight hours now.
Well done to Owen for comfirming that it all starts at 5.30am tommorow, so everyone knows now.
5.30am tomorrow is VERY exciting. New studio, graphics, hopefully re-jigged music and thankfully we will never have to see the dreadful fake newsroom set that will disappear into the abyss of dire newsroom studio sets forever. Rejoice. All that's left is for ITV to increase ITN's budget and for the ITN name to be reinstated. So and so, ITN, Timbuktu smacks of authority and respectability.
Sky News has more international correspondents than ITV News now, especially with the recent opening of the Indian bureaux, which adds to the ones in Washington, Dublin, Jerusalem, Brussels, Johannesburg, Moscow and Bejing, with some of those bureaux having two correspondents compared to ITV's having only one. Add to that the resources of effectively an Australian bureaux in Sky News Austraila, and FOX News in the U.S., and you can see ITV News is outgunned by both BBC News and Sky News. This simply is not good enough, especially as ITV News has a 24-hour news channel AND network bulletins on ITV1.
It's all very well having all that, but the facts simply are that stories in places like India, Australia etc can all be covered by ITV News. This was demonstrated by the Iran Earthquake, RWC Final, and Greg Rusedski, Neil Connery being able to report from Iran live, and John Irvine reporting from Sydney and Beijing, as well as James Mates in Sydney. Also we've seen recently Bill Neely in Abuja, Robert Moore in California, Juliet Bremner in Paris and Istanbul, Angus Walker in Istanbul, Mark Webster in Belfast, as well as using NBC News for American and international coverage on the ITV News Channel, who are easily better than Fox, and as far as I can see all these reporters are better than Sky News reporters. It would be a bonus if ITN started putting reporters in Beijing, Singapore, Paris, New York, California, Moscow and Dublin, and it would prove to make international news coverage better, but with the correspondents it has it can still easily rival Sky News' International covergage.
So 5.30am it is then. So I guess the overnight summaries will come from the old set, then the Morning News from the new set. Don't know if it is worth getting up for though, as the Morning News is always a watered down version presentation wise.
I wonder if we'll get a new pre-news ident tomorrow - I'm fed up with the current one. Also, will their be a relaunch promo as ITV1 and ITV2 had when they relaunched. This could be played as a filler on the ITV News Channel.
Any one want a sneak preview of the new music? It's the classic ITN music, arranged by Dave Hewson and Bill Baylis - much better than the current one. There is two different arrangements - one for national and one for regional possibly, although I can't tell the difference.MP3 File