ITV News

Why do they never trail these special programmes properly?

Though they've been trailing this week's US coverage extensively since yesterday, the end of the Evening News was the first mention of this series of 7pm specials with Felicity Barr.

Good to see them using the Washington studio to interview pundits and US politicians as well as two-ways with correspondents:
http://www.dolben.demon.co.uk/newschannel/washington%20studio.jpg

And I like this background which they used during the presidential elections and has been used again today:
http://www.dolben.demon.co.uk/newschannel/4%20more%20years[3].jpg

Anyone know if Nina presented the 15:00 or the 18:30 today?

Ive noticed the desk light its still broken...

Wasn't the desk meant to be silver when the new set launched, and anyway I prefer the lights off - it creates a greater contrast against the blue backdrop.

There is no 15:00 bulletin on ITV1 anymore. But she did infact present the 15:00 - 16:00 hour on the ITV News Channel alogn with Mark Austin. They both also presented the 18:30 ITV1 News.

Oh dear. NTL a bit slow cutting away from Evening News then. The ITV1 weather sponsorship is run from LNN, but the actual weather report is run from ITN. If NTL are slow in cutting away, then they'll get the weather VT clock standing by to run on ITV1 (as in Londoner's screenshot). The clock runs 5 seconds after the end of Evening News.

Is the cut at NTL manual, or triggered by a GPI or similar fired from the ITN gallery? AIUI the ad-breaks,dropped in by NTL, on the ITVNC are triggered remotely via GPI from ITN?

The breaks used to be GPI triggered from ITN in the old ITN News Channel days. Nowadays known opt times are automatically triggered by the automation system at NTL, whereas moveable break times (i.e. the quarter past, half past, and quarter to breaks on News Channel) are handled manually. The opt out of Evening News is a known opt time, so I suspect that either they received (or entered) the wrong time, or they forgot to set an automatic opt.

Ah, that reminds me of the classic event that took place during the ITN News Channel's 2000 American Election Special. We were about 20 seconds into the opening titles when the technical director hit the wrong button on the vision mixer and triggered a break. Oh how we laughed. I don't think the editorial team were too impressed though.

The News Channel is now showing recorded output from 8.30pm with the 'Recorder Earlier' graphic over the clock.

Now the DOG and ticker have disappeared completely, with just the Recorded Earlier strap remaining (presumably added by NTL?)

Oh and I notice that the 10.30 now has new sports graphics:
http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/1030sport.jpg

Very strange going ons, and I do like the new sports graphics, I wonder why they were only used on the 10:30, on the news channel it's been the usual green all day. Especially with Mark Austin in the 3pm hour keeping an eye on the Test Cricket results, he even ablibbed them at one point from the desk computer, with Nina then saying 'You've just told us that' with a giggle as he re read it on the autocue.

Why is it that they always seem to leave a gap top and bottom for the moving squares to be shown? Isn't it enough that we have them the rest of the time anyway, it would be nice to see them used as they have done with the american flag background to fill up the whole wall.

It would also be nice to see some kind of special backgrounds brought in. When watching Sky News they tend to have specially created graphics packages for stories, where as on ITV News you're lucky if you get an enlarged image.