ITN - The Classic Years

A rough snippet I have from ITN Morning News 1989 with Zeinab Badawi:

Thanks for that fox1, much appreciated. Do you happen to have any other footage of ITN news programmes from the late 80s/early 90s? It was such a good era and I'd love to see some more clips if you have them as well as the time to transfer them.

That closing music was superb... file number 10203 over at Meldrum Private Parts is longer and sounds brilliant!

No problem! Here are some more from me... and I fixed that Morning News clip.

News at One



Channel 4 Daily World News



Coming Up at 1



ITN News with Sue Carpenter - Hillsborough Disaster 1989



Never bettered - The London Programme 1989



..and audio-enhanced: 'The World This Week' Closer 1989

Oh that is wonderful! Thank you so much fox1. It's great to see and hear such fantastic news presentation. Why oh why can't broadcasters maintain such high standards these days? Everything's so plain, boring and generic now and modern news themes have no soul whatsoever. I know I've said it before, but there really is only one word to describe that Morning News closing theme... epic!

As we're closing in on the dawn of another new era of ITV News, I thought I'd share this video which was uploaded recently to YouTube: http://youtu.be/TdnHlNYU23Y?t=1m15s. It's one of my all-time favourite presentation brands from ITN. I don't know why it's so effective - I think it's a mixture of the pictures being shown straight away with the logo formation, the short snappy headlines and the urgent 'lights up' along with that little dramatic musical sting. It just works for me - I wish news presentation was a bit more straightforward like that now. Personally I think ITV News - along with all the other broadcasters - has become to Americanised and I'd certainly like to see a back-to-basics approach at some point in the future... sadly I doubt it will be any time soon though.

They happened in the order you mention, with the more basic logo coinciding with the 1995 rebrand of other programmes.

The original titles included a camera moving towards TMcD's side - this was prerecorded. There was also a theme tune reprise after the headlines, which was the same as the 2008 version. It initially didn't have a bum-bum-bum-bum before the first chime of Big Ben, but about summer 1993 it was added.

I think the problem with this first version was that whilst they could use the same version of the titles when TMcD presented, as you couldn't tell what colour shirt/tie he was wearing from the side, they had a problem when Julia Summerville presented as she wore different coloured suits. So after a while of using a version which featured her, they changed it to a newsroom shot which cut to the headlines before you could see who was presenting.

The second version replaced the newsroom shot with a simpler version which panned left to the newsreader. It may have been live - I'm not sure. The theme reprise after the headlines remained the same.

The third version removed the headlines reprise, and moved the shot from this point (the camera moved forward towards the desk) to immediately before the headlines.

After this, there were no changes to the titles apart from the mentioned ITN logo changes.[/quote]

Thanks for the description, Richard - that last bit you said about them dropping the newsroom shot and the post-headlines sting was because they moved the programme down into one of the basement studios at that point. So obviously they could no longer do the fancy newsroom/atrium shots.

Out of interest, can you remember how long the original 1992 NAT theme lasted -the one without the drums before the first bong?

Thanks for the info, Robert.

The non drums version was still in use at Easter 1993 but I think it was changed later that year.

This video on YouTube suggests the revised theme was already in use by March 1993:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EesUQE-FMCs

Incidentally, does anyone know when they dropped that post-headline sweep of the studio? I'm assuming it was exactly at the point they moved into the basement studio and dispensed with the newsroom shot - it would have been a little repetitive to have the exact same camera sweep on either side of the headline bongs.

My best guess is that it was indeed upon moving to the basement that the bong sting was dropped. Like you say, they replaced the atrium shot in the titles with the sweeping studio shot which had previously been used as the bong sting. So it would have been a little repetitive. This was also the point at which the NAT voiceover was shortened a bit to "From ITN..." rather than "From the headquarters of ITN...".

I've just been searching for some old ITN presentation on YouTube and I came across this little gem which shows a very rare sighting of Alastair Burnet in the Gray's Inn Road atrium studio: http://youtu.be/rzvMqW7p_KE?t=6m33s This would probably have been from early in 1991 when the Gulf War was under way, so 200 GIR is literally brand new here. ITN had only moved into the building in December 1990. And if I'm not mistaken, that little TV screen he interviews Jeremy Thompson and Bill Neely on is the one they used to wheel in for the News at 5.40!

What a find! Thanks for sharing. I've never seen Alastair present from the newsroom at GIR before. I'm intrigued now... I wonder whether he ever did the odd weekend bulletin (which came from the newsroom) at this late stage.

Notice how bare the newsroom looks during this early period compared to the later years, I wonder when they put all the world maps on the walls? The view out into the atrium looks very dark as well in the other camera shots. It's interesting to see this bulletin in comparison to the later 1990s ones, when the camera shots displaying how full the whole building had become.

Lovely to see Alastair throwing over to a young Bill Neely as well!