ITN - Classic Presentation

So you're saying they can't have used it as inspiration because it happened in the past and they were working on other shows when it was broadcast?

Good satire doesn't just draw from contemporary sources, it takes what's happened in the past and extrapolates where that could have led too. Considering the timescales involved, it's not that unlikely that C4 Daily was what prompted them to satirise news programming in the first place.

There were interviews with Chris Morris done at the time, and he never once mentioned The Channel 4 Daily. News At Ten, the Nine O'Clock News, Sky News, CNN, all those were mentioned, but the Channel 4 Daily? Not once as I recall. In fact, if memory serves, I don't think they went after breakfast television at all with their parody. It was much more that the main evening news was being parodied, not breakfast television.

Jeez, so many suppositions, so lacking in any actual evidence!

The fact is Chris Morris never once referenced The Channel 4 Daily in any interview I remember, and The Day Today was itself a parody of main evening news programmes, not breakfast television.

Have you actually even watched it?

The graphics were designed by Richard Norley, then head of ITN Commercial Design, and former Head of Graphics at Channel 4 News. Only an idiot would not be able to see the similarities between the graphics used on C4 Daily and The Day Today.

Only a conspiracy theorist would take the evidence you just cited and make a connection between the Channel 4 Daily and The Day Today. I'm not saying there weren't similarities. I could probably take an edition of GMTV and point out a number of similarities but that's not the point.

The point is, it wasn't in the writer's thinking.

I don't think I've ever heard Iannucci mention Ken Clarke in any interviews regarding The Thick of It, yet Peter Mannion is clearly heavily based on him. I don't think I've every heard the Catholic Church mention any pagan religions as influences, but several biblical tales seem to be heavily influenced by pagan stories. Writers don't list every influence they have or every idea they've borrowed - half of classic Doctor Who is basically rewriting other peoples works but with a sci-fi twist but they didn't at the time go 'Now on BBC One, George Orwell's 1984 is recycled in this weeks adventure with the Doctor'.

Also while The Day Today was styled similarly to the evening news programmes in some senses, the segmented format with separate sport and business desks as well as extended promos and genutainment segments were't really seen in either the News at Ten or the Nine O'Clock News at the time and is a closer format to Breakfast programmes, like the Channel Four Daily.

You also suggest that Daily can't have influenced The Day Today as it had finished before the latter aired - yet the programme must have been mainly, if not entirely produced in 1993 just months after Daily finished. If they had been given the go ahead to move it to TV after On The Hour, development could have begun as early as 1992 with them taking influence from all areas of news programming from then on. The Day Today featured Business, Sports, Entertainment, Weather, Consumer and Cartoon (albeit Physical Newspaer 'style') segments around the main news stories - very similar in format to the Channel 4 Daily. Also as has originally been stated it is likely that the ITN team who produced the graphics for The Day Today had also worked on the Channel Four Daily and it's much easier to just reuse, change or exaggerate concepts you've already come up with than start afresh. While nobody is saying it was the only influence, it seems that the format of The Day Today was influenced by programmes like Channel 4 Daily more than anything else. Either that or it is a massive coincidence.

True, but it was also something that at that time CNN were doing. It's well known that in CNN's early days, their definition of 'news' was 'loose' to put it mildly, including things like business, sport, weather, showbiz, style, recipes and even fitness routines. It's as likely if not more so, that CNN was in part being parodied by that, rather than the Channel 4 Daily, which by 1992 had long since lost Comic Book, Countdown Masters and Streetwise, and was nothing more than News, Business, Sports, Weather and Arts news.



Yes, months after the Daily had finished but about 2 years after the original format, the one you are referencing was dumped in favour of a more serious format that removed elements like Comic Book and Countdown Masters from the mix. The difference between the original format and the later format was like night and day



I think you'll find CNN was more influential in format terms than the Channel 4 Daily was.

Oh shut up. Really.

Any argument you raise with me in future, in any thread, I'm going to ignore. Just as I would do any other troll.

Well, it's sad that you think I'm trolling you, rather than trying to correct a factual error, but that's the modern way I guess. If you can't cope with being told the truth, you condemn it as trolling. I will never understand it, but there you go, such is life.

There's the truth and the Cityprod version of the truth which matches his opinion.

No, there's the truth, based on opinions, and the truth based on actual evidence. I always go for evidence, the more solid, the better. Circumstantial evidence, carries far less weight.

It's a simple concept, perhaps you ought to try it sometime.

I don't think we were particularly talking about format - The Day Today skewered a lot of different formats (Newsnight in particular) - but in terms of graphic design, the fact that ITN did the graphics for The Day Today, and they were designed by ITN News graphic designers who would also have worked on titles for things like Channel Four Daily, means there is definitely scope for some influence.

If the designers got a brief for "News - but even more OTT" from The Day Today team, they would naturally think back (and look back) at their own previous news work for inspiration, as well as the obvious other stuff (the bigger than reality UK map on some of the globes is obviously a nod to the Flying Fish Finger Nine).

Quite often designers will work to a brief rather than their own wishes, and they may well have been commissioned to deliver some quite OTT stuff by News producers and editors at ITN in the past that would have triggered this.

Also designers are often, by their nature, very interested in other's work in their (and other) areas - and are influenced by that. ITN designers will no doubt have been very familiar with other graphic design looks and packages from other broadcasters and will have analysed them. Knowing some of the team at Jump who worked on The Day Today I think it's fair to assume they will also have looked at their own news work for some inspiration too.