ITV News

Geraint isn't wooden ... he just looks terrified when he reads the news, tries to hard to pull a serious face and has a really annoying habit of leaning forward. But he is a brilliant reporter I think.

No ident into the LN then. Just a short ITV 1 bumper and straight into the news.

I think they may have had a few timing problems. Loose Woomen Part 4 just had a countdown for a couple of seconds before the ident. The ads before the LN may have gone on to long and ITV may have misjudged the timings. Or it could be the end of the start ident. We will see on the EN

We will see on the EN. It was only at 1.30, when there was no announcer to introduce the LN, but I did see the credits of loose women and noted that the announcer did say the news was next with lucy meacock and alastair stewart. After the advert, we got a short itv 1 bumper and then it was straight in with the clock face and the opening to the news.

OT, apparently its geriant and lucy down for EN tonight. Hopefully it is lucy doing it tonight.

I think he's an OK reporter, but I agree he's much better at that than reading the news.

As has already been said - strange opening to the Lunchtime News with a breakbumper straight into the titles. On a slightly different note, what does everyone think of the daytime skyline now? I really wasn't that keen on it when it debuted but it's definitely looking a lot better now that they've tweaked it ever so slightly. Still doesn't look as good as the Evening News and NaT backdrops though.

I think that the LN background is quite good, now it has been tweaked slightly. Of course it won't be good as the evening, because it is quite dark and is based on the News at Ten background.

But overall it is a thumbs up from me!

I don't think the light backdrop is something they can make good look- cityscapes just look better in the dark when its all lit up, thats all there is too it I think. I do find it looking very bare and empty though but as I've said I suppose it can't be helped.

About the breakbumper it was probably problems with ITV, but even if they are ditching them for the news it won't become apparent until 11pm anyway. Maybe its just Granada or maybe its all regions, I don't know, but don't they go straight from the end of the regional bulletin into the national news?

I am also from the Granada region and yes we just go straight into the national news after the emails are read out. It is only on very rare occasions that we go to a break after Granada Reports. Even when we do go for a break though, it is a breakbumper just before the news starts.

Are the Lunchtime News doing less live reports now. The last couple of episodes I've seen have generally featured down the line reports where Alistair spoke to some one "earlier", rather than a live satellite link.

I noticed that today Alistair did 2 pre-recorded interviews, whilst Lucy didn't do any, but she did conduct 2 live interviews yesterday

It was probably just a co-incidence that both of the stories needing the interviews were already scripted to be Alastair's.

In the ITV Central thread it has been mentioned that Steve Clamp is to join ITV News, as his co-presenter said last night following him saying goodbye to Central Tonight.