ITV considering moving late news to 11pm (again...)

Now where have we heard all this before?

Why not move it to Nine permanently.

Oops.

But most of the peak time output that ITV has is dire anyway (Reality this and that.....). Shouldn't they first of all be concentrating on improving the quality of their non-news output, before deciding to move the News slot yet again?

Regardless of how it is scheduled, ITV news needs more funding and less interference from ITV's management. ITN should be allowed to literally run the show. It seems to do pretty well with the channel 4 programme.
Charles Allen and his cronies also need to realise that you get what you pay for. They can't expect to pay ITN a fraction of what it formerly received and expect a high quality product.

Anyway, I second news at 9. No other non-rolling news channel has a programme at that time, and news at nine was enormously successful during the Iraq invasion.

Ah... you've got to feel sorry for poor old ITV.

It strikes me that TV news can either be an institution or a commodity. News at Ten was an institution, and gained hudge audiences of corriesque proportions. But then, what... was it News at When or just a drop in production values, or even the BBC catching up, that led to ITV news becoming a commodity.

Now its a poor sad reflection of its former self shunted around the schedules, under-funded and lacking the front of (say) Sky News.

I'd say one thing that I know will be contreversial here, and that is that ITV has made a bold move in integrating national and regional news. It seems to work well, and would be even better if the sponsorship packages of the various weather segments were more seamless. The idea of inegrated news sequences, fromted by local and network journalists could me made pretty compelling. I know that the driver for this was one of expediency, but it does seem to present them with an opportunity to develop something that could become an institution again, rather than a commodity.

Excellent post immediately above. Well summed up Sir.

I agree with both of these points. The national/regional mix in a single programme is much better - and the BBC have followed this example. It would be better to have the News at Nine rather than a return to the (very american sounding) "Nightly News" (at 11pm).

By 11pm most people are thinking of heading off to bed shortly afterwards, and don't necessarily want to concentrate on events of the day just gone. BBC always had good ratings for their 9 o'clock News, and only moved it to 10 after ITV vacated the slot.

If ITV put the news on at 9, they could then put on a 2 hour film or drama at 9.30 which would satisfy most people who are heading for bed around 11-11.30.

EDIT: Just another thought: Since the two main news bulletins would only be 2 hours apart, they could move the early evening news back to 5.30-6.30, and put a quiz, comedy or chat show (eg Paul O'Grady) in the 6.30-7.00 slot (the main opposition in this slot being the BBC Regional News and Hollyoaks).

Just a thought

Well put Stuart. I think the Nine would be a winner. Especially if it was a double-header a la old News at Ten style.

Anchors???? Why not Nicholas Owen and Mary Nightingale, with Alastair Stewart as the other relief presenter.

If only Burnet and Gall were still around.....................

Nice idea for anchors BBCWORLD, I thought Owen/Nightingale worked well as a team on the revamped early evening news.

I fondly remember the days of Burnett & Gall (just ), and also the (often worse for drink) Reggie Bosenquet

I dont watch the 10.30 ITV News, but isnt the problem more to do with the programming scheduled around the bulletin? The bulletin is often preceded by lucklusture programming used as nothing more than a filler (eg TVs Nughtiest Blunders 200,000) or the first half of films, sometimes only the first 30mins of a film! The low audience for the news is totally down to the poor programming in the 10-10.30pm slot and moreso, the damaged reputation of ITV news. Moving the news again will make ITV news more of a joke, so the only option is to improve the preceding programmes. But, as Ive said, I never watch that bulletin or anything else on ITV1 so they can do whatever the hell they want with the news it wont bother me - still isnt it fun though to sit back and watch ITV slowly self destruct