ITV News

Can anyone remember how ITN handled News at Ten being delayed during the 1990s? Did it ever go on the air after 11pm back then? If so, did they keep the NAT branding or change it to a standard bulletin?

I can vaguely recall the clock face on the monitors in the background having no hands displayed on them, couldn't say if they dropped the brand altogether though,

I know in older clips I've seen (probably more 80's than 90's) the hands on the clock showing 10.16, with no bongs and I think just no branding - just a voice over saying "From the studios of ITN, the news - with... "


I know during the final years of News at Ten it often aired at 10.15pm on Champions League nights, when Corrie used to air at 9.45pm. I think it was still branded News at Ten then.

During the 1988-1992 era, if News at Ten was delayed for any reason (usually for Party Political Broadcasts), the hands on Big Ben's clock face would show the actual time instead of ten, even if the bulletin started at one minute past 10. IIRC this was done using a computer called HARRY.

As Brekkie hinted towards, when NaT began at 10.15 around the time of the Falklands War, the picture of Big Ben at the end of the opening titles reflected the actual start time of the bulletin. The bongs were usually dropped on bulletins that didn't start at 10pm.

If that was a Quantel Harry - a well known mid-80s to early-90s uncompressed hard disc recorder usually integrated with a Quantel Paintbox and Encore DVE then "Computer" is an interesting description. It was an amazing bit of technology - using hardware video processors, parallel transfer hard drives and lots of plumbing. It was the first real successful commercial uncompressed compositor - and at one point (it arrived just before D1 VTRs) it was one of the only ways of doing multiple generation layering in quality.

ITN certainly had at least one.

It probably did composite the hands onto Big Ben - it was also used to do the Channel 4 News opening sequence every night, as well as produce the graphics for The Day Today (which were produced by an in-house ITN graphics team - a large chunk of whom are now "Jump" - and responsible for lots of glossy title sequences)

Its been quite an interesting weekend and bank holiday in terms of presentation. Usually they just have the one presenter doing the full three days (and on bank holidays its usually Steve Scott) but this time they've had Nina, Steve and Lucy presenting from Saturday-today respectively.

I'm shocked to see Lucy Meacock presenting the Lunchtime News. Nina presented on Saturday, with Steve on Sunday who I thought would do today, he has done times I've watched in the past.

No doubt the LN will be better, with one anchor.

My, you shock easy....

I'm not really struck with Lucy Meacock. I much prefer Nina or Scott.

Speaking of presenters, whatever happened to Andrea Catherwood? She was one of ITN's best in my opinion.

Andrea ended up hosting that current affairs show on a Sunday. Not sure what happened to her after that. Agree that she was good.

Yep, she anchored the Sunday Politics or something like that, but it ended up being scrapped, and since then she hasn't went back to ITV News.

Has Lawrence McGinty left ITV News. I have not seen him for a while. I would have thought he would have reported on the Mars Mission if he was around.