London Terror Incidents

Going over old ground but as a newsgathering organisation they should have been hanging around waiting for confirmation of what was happening. It was clear something was happening but initially unclear how serious it was - but it was potentially a terrorist attack. I'm sure many of us here have had to hang around at work a bit longer than we'd like waiting for something that may or may not have happened.


As with anything there are costs and there is value - and ITV's brand value has been hit slightly over the last couple of weeks. In many ways going on air last night then off for live TV gambling was worse than not airing at all, and they went off at a time when the facts were still far from clear. It felt like ITV were saying "never mind about London, try and win some cash!".

The reality I guess though is if they had stayed on air what would have been the appropriate time to go off air? Personally I'd have thought another hour or so would suffice and then replacing the remainder of Jackpot 24/7 with something less jarring like a repeat of The Chase.

I agree with alot of your post, I don't agree with the point

AT least there made the effort and got people on the ground, Its was good 40mins. Still better then Manchester. The big question seems to be how does ITV cover the 3 hour gap between ITV news and GMB ( 3 hours is Midnight to 3am- that when GMB staff are getting ready)

No it hasn't. 99.9% of viewers have seen the news specials, the special editions of the ITV Evening News, extended News at Tens, special editions of regional news magazines, the emotive special edition of Tonight etc etc. Only 0.1% of viewers will be disgusted that they didn't air a programme overnight two weeks ago, or indeed overnight all night last night.

In that case, I'm shocked.

It doesn't make any logical or financial sense for a commercial broadcaster to have everything on 'stand-by' just incase something happens - especially late at night.

If it did they may as well just run a news channel.

Saying that, if what happened took place somewhere else like Leeds or a more rural town, the television output from every broadcaster would have been drastically different.

A lot of last nights coverage would have been down to 4G - pity the broadcaster who rocked up with an SNG truck and then very quickly found the truck in an extended corden, and the crew forced back rendering the truck useless

GMB cannot be on air at 3am.

GMB cannot be on air at 3am.
GMB cannot be on air at 3am.
Maybe if we say it enough times you might actually listen.

LET ME REPEAT MYSELF:
GMB STAFF
GMB STAFF
GMB STAFF

If there was some sort of a deal between ITN and GMB stuff it might be possible to get ITV news special out early. Lets be clear here if two are still sperate I think that needs to change....

ITV News staff work at ITN.

GMB staff are employees of ITV Studios as part of the ITV Breakfast franchise and is a legacy of when GMTV operated it.

However it has been known for ITV News reporters to work on GMB in special circumstances.

Then there need a merger. There use the same graphics half the time.

Not a merger, but yeah, it is odd that GMB isn't an ITN production.

I'm not sure that bares any relevance to the business decisions and stuff behind the scenes. Graphics are to make things consistent for the viewer, the same as regional ITV News programmes use the same graphics.

If it made sense for the programme to be produced by ITN I'm sure it would be. It's a very different beast to the other ITV News programmes which doesn't rely on a lot of reports and it's not exclusively a news programme.

But you don't hang around at work every night just in case something does happen. When they came off air nothing had happened and the first reports of something happening were 20 minutes away.


Do you want ITV News staff to hang around for 20 minutes after every bulletin just in case? What happens if a major news story breaks 25 minutes after the bulletin?

Kasia on location for Newsday