Bye Bye ITN?

What I suggest if the current ITN employees are against ITV taking 100% of ITN, let them go on strike.
However, the only reason I support the irritating Chairman of ITV, is if he gets the ITV news contract, he will let reporters sign off their reports with "reporters name, ITN" instead of the current and degrading "ITV News".

Maximus is referring to this piece by Matt Wells in today's Media Guardian supplement:
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,1396812,00.html

I don't think they'd have much choice. C4's news is considered to be part of it's public service remit, and AIUI any public service on any channel which can't be provided commercially must then be provided by the BBC.

That, indeed, is why BBC Parliament exists - the BBC didn't want it, but the old Parliament Channel failed to make a go of it commercially, provision of TV coverage from Westminster (which I think is a requirement under the broadcasting act) fell by default to the BBC.

Okay, so one person has mentioned Reuters , but stupidly applied it to ITV.

And another person has only been able to think of Sky, as far as a non-ITN/ITV Channel 4 News situation is concerned.

Why has nobody yet twigged on to marrying the two emboldened elements, as a possibility? (i.e. Post-ITN/ITV, Channel 4 might turn to Reuters for their news?)

Because I understood Reuters to be scaling back their own news production in television and even (according to this forum) looking for others to help them produce their existing content!



That would be a tad ironic...

Has anyone got or tried to buy this book about ITN? As it does sound interesting and I wouldn't mind reading it. Now it has been published, but Play.com is out of stock, Amazon.co.uk is charging a high price with Postage and Packaging. I've popped into town into WHSmith and Waterstones and neither of them have it!

Just select Supersave delivery for the book from Amazon. That's what i did.

It's available here, which is a bookshop owned by the publishers of the book.

(disclaimer - I occasionally work for that company)

I really, really! Hope ITV don’t buy out ITN, nor do they drop ITN! I mean ITN is like... well ITN! It would be such a shame to see them go under.

Well - you really really really need to hope then! In the MediaGuardian articles it's made very clear that if ITV don't buy out ITN, they'll drop ITN!

Two points on this. Firstly, this matter is very unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. There is plenty of time left on the ITV contract and major developments like this often take years to get going. There is also the question of whether the current bosses of ITV will still be in place come contract renegotiation time. There are widespread rumours that a certain Mr Dyke has an interest in an ITV takeover which could clearly change the complexion of any future deals.

Secondly, remember that ITN produced Channel 4 News quite happily for ten years up to 1992 whilst ITN was wholly owned by the ITV companies. So an ITV-owned ITN producing Channel 4 News is not necessarily such an outrageous prospect.

Today's Evening Standard has a big interview with David Mannion responding to this week's speculation about the future of ITN. Unfortunately the Standard don't put their media pages online.

Amongst other things he is challenged on the rather over-ambitious forecasts for the ITV News Channel he made this time last year. This is his response


He also hints that Trevor McDonald's successor is likely to be a current ITV presenter: "We have a tremendous amount of talent in-house. They'll take some beating."