ITV News

What breakfast programme is this?
Mr Nicolson agreed to do the football results to have his name and voice heard on ITV1. The football results are good and it goes back to the days of the "ITN Football Results Service" in the days of the ITN Weekend News of the late 1980s.

BBC Breakfast News pre-October 2000. He also did News 24 before joining ITN - he was the presenter when the September 11th attacks happened.

Does anyone else think that ITV NC would be better turning into sort of a UK BBC World? Half hour news bulletins on the hour. This would save 12 hours of Live programming a day, enabling to go 24 hours, with a current affairs programme on the half hour. They will also break into a programme for live coverage. I think this would work well, and be much easier for the smaller budget of the ITV NC.

No - that would destroy the channel's ability to be a contender in the breaking news stakes.

As it is the ITV NC has often had the edge over N24 on certain breaking stories precisely because it wasn't stuck with recorded feature programmes in the back half hour.

And where are they going to get all these current affairs programmes from? There's only so many times you can show Tonight with Trevor McDonald - and I would have thought that specially commissioned current affairs output would cost considerably more than bog-standard rolling news output.

On another note, it is good to see Nick and Leyla back presenting together this afternoon.

After a few strong weeks of 'real' news on The ITV Evening News they have resorted to an Exclusive interview with David Beckham! Alex Thomas has the story and im sure there will be the interview in full on the ITV News Channel sometime tonight!

Why doesnt Nick get anytime off? Trevs and Mary and Mark gets time off, and two of them hardly ever present, Nick works very hard he presents on the News Channel many more times than the others and doesnt hardly get any time off!

Nick has had lots of weeks off since the relaunch - more than Mark and Mary I would say.

Though not as many as Trevor!

WEAKNESSES OF ITV NEWS
Not 24 hour (recorded News At Ten-Thirty from 12-5)
ITV News isn't as strong a brand as ITN
Emphasis on trusted faces - Nick Owen spouting showbizzy crap isn't going to interest people
Simulcasts of ITV1 programmes - how many people have ITVN but not ITV1? Short answer: None.
Forced removal of classic trusted regional names like LWT, HTV and Central - even to a certain extent Carlton and Granada

MY SOLUTIONS
Rename ITV News as ITVN
Restore regional names in news programming
Broadcast regional news programmes instead of repeats of News at 10 between 11:30 and 6 (im not sure the number of regions)
Ditch Trevor McDonald and Owen Thomas
Ditch the "Wall Of News" - I've hated it since Day 1
Ditch the classic theme - time for a change
Ditch simulcasts

That's just me. Anyone agree?

On most days the simulcasted bulletins three times a day aren't a problem - they just need to have more flexibility for the ITVNC to do its own thing when the occasion demands so it can have continuous coverage of developing stories and live coverage of events, speeches, press conferences etc.

Nine times out of ten the simulcasts are fine and avoid pointless duplication.

How can you "avoid pointless duplication" when two channels are showing EXACTLY the same thing for 90 minutes of the 17 hours they broadcast live and then the same 30 minute programme for the remaining hours? Seems very pointless. A story carried by the News at 10.30 can dramatically alter between then and 5:30am. Imagine Diana crashing - at 2am she was "concussed", at 4am she was six feet under.

I was referring to the simulcasts, not the overnight repeats.

Of course an appointment-to-view bulletin on a mixed-genre channel is quite a different beast to a rolling news service, but there is - IMHO - no major problem with the 90 minutes worth of simulcasts. 90 per cent of the time the alternative to the simulcast would be another presenter sitting in a CSO broom cupboard introducing the same stories, reports and lives in a different order.

If they exhibited more flexibility re. the simulcasts (ie not cutting off live coverage of the PM's monthly news conference and the last 5 mins of PMQs each week in order to show the Lunchtime News) I don't think there is a great problem with the current setup.

Ideally the NC would have its own dedicated studio, etc - but I think there are higher priorities for improving aspects of ITV News output.

Of course I agree that the overnight service is unsatisfactory. But then so is News 24's.

But that was not the point I was addressing in my response to you.

And if such a significant event were to happen, then I'm quite sure the ITV News Channel would provide coverage ie. Iraq War / Diana etc.

However, there is really little point in the ITVNC putting out live coverage through the small hours, because nothing USUALLY happens. If it were live, it would just be the same newcaster putting out the same bulletin and same reports, what's the point in paying a crew to do that ?

They have a duty newscaster overnight providing the short ITV1 bulletins and the Morning News, in the event of a major breaking story, I'm sure they would provide coverage.