No live OB's on News@10.30 tonight. Is John's last bulletin tomorrow night then, as he said he would see us same time tomorrow. It would be nice to have all the presenters in the studio he has worked with to say goodbye.
No live OB's on News@10.30 tonight. Is John's last bulletin tomorrow night then, as he said he would see us same time tomorrow. It would be nice to have all the presenters in the studio he has worked with to say goodbye.
Yes it seems it's John's last day tomorrow. Bringing all the presenters in would look a bit trivial though. Although I would expect their to be some kind of tribute - if just on the News Channel.
Watching Jon Culshaw there, its a wonder nobody has ever 'done' a John Suchet, what with the way he always puts on that silly gruff tone at the end of every paragraph, that'll definally be missed.
I'd like to see a bit of a tribute, maybe Nicholas Owen could walk in at the end and present him with something.
Let's hope he decides to pop back every now and then and appears on the late news as often as Michael Buerk does on the other side, after all Angela Rippon returned to broadcasting!
Some interesting thoughts about ITV News from Five's Chris Shaw in his Press Gazette column.
Chris Shaw posted:
Reports of Sir Trevor McDonald’s imminent departure from the ITV anchor’s chair have been dismissed as premature tittle-tattle, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t indulge in a bit of succession speculation.
My money is on a bloke. I don’t feel ITV is quite ready to break that convention, so we can assume it’s unlikely to be Kirsty Young, Mary Nightingale or Fiona Bruce.
The male frontrunners from the fortysomething generation are probably ITV’s Mark “golden boy” Austin and Dermot “dark horse” Murnaghan, who left ITV and is clearly being groomed for big things at BBC News.
There are a couple of other possibles: Jeremy Thompson is a terrific anchor on Sky and then there’s Alastair Stewart.
Fifteen years ago Stewart was beaten to the anchor job on News at Ten by McDonald. He then left ITN to front London Tonight, which was being run by his friend and mentor Clive Jones.
Today, Jones is in charge of the whole of ITV News and Stewart is back in Gray’s Inn Road, still fronting London Tonight, but now also the morning star of the ITV News Channel.
Could we be about to witness the ultimate network comeback?
He also describes the ITV Evening News as "the most improved news show on television."
He adds: "Johnny Irvine’s double award of best reporter and best foreign reporter of the year was also vindication of ITV’s impressive investment in coverage of the war in Iraq in 2003."