As I have already said, on reflection, I should not have posted what I did and I apologise for any offence caused to members of this forum and more importantly, to Alastair (f he has seen this forum).
Yes, they are. I'm on Facebook, don't have him as a friend and I can see the words "Former Newscaster at ITN" as the original poster commented. If content is to be private then it should be made private (which Alastair may or may not do on a post by post basis anyway). Not that any of this really needed a mass discussion, I'd hope Alastair would not see someone pointing out a intriguingly-worded bio as too concerning!
I worry that the impending shakeup is as much about the (new-ish) management's desire to put their mark on ITV News and be seen to have done something, as it is about any real pressing need for change to what is currently a strong lineup.
Of course, the current presenting team is a product of the Mannion/Turness years, and I fear that the current regime cannot resist change for its own sake.
Plus I think we all know that whatever they do at Ten, they are unlikely to gain any ground on the BBC News, so why bother at all. If its like many things it'll just annoy the viewers they do have and not gain any new ones.
As Andrew says ITV are unlikely to gain any ground on the BBC's News service no matter what they do. However that still doesn't mean they shouldn't try and that they cannot have an unique place within British TV News. For me it's not the current Presenters that are the problem with ITV News, nor the actual presentation which I feel is very modern but some of the content and style of the content (more Regionally than anything) is poor compared to the BBC and Sky. Therefore if they don't want to spend more money on more quality content to fill the programming maybe they should try something new by reducing the duration of their News programming to produce a more fast paced bulletin alternative to the BBC's offering*?
Could ITV get away with a 20 minute National bulletin at 13:30/18:30 and 22:00 (with Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and Channel Islands viewers getting their own 30 minute UK/Home Nation programmes)? In England these National programmes could then be followed by a 10 minute sub-Regional News programme...a real alternative to the BBC News . With the money saved by ITV they could produce the already mentioned Nation News programmes (helping STV/UTV through ITV/ITN News), help ITV News/ITV find money for more Current Affairs in their schedule, produce sub-Regional News bulletins for Good Morning Britain (every 1/2 hour) and produce weekly Regional Political and Life programming (for example the already monthly Central Lobby and a new string named Central Life for the Regions lighter stories?). This might not gain any new viewers but a fresh take on their News content might just help to gain viewers not so fussed to see a longer bulletin and pull different viewer types into ITV who like Current Affairs programming...
