ITV News

You'll get your ITN analysis at 22:00. I completely agree with those supporting ITV's decision tonight. What is the point of showing exactly the same thing as the BBC when there are many viewers who wouldn't care a jot about the handover of power. Many more people would be annoyed by missing normal programmes than rolling news coverage that is readily available elsewhere. ITV can't cater for everybody at once!

With the benefit of hindsight, the scheduling has been all wrong tonight.

Regional News shouldn't have been dropped, it should have aired at 6.20pm, enough time for the main sub-regional news without the feature items. Last night I would have aired it at 6.50pm.

Children's Hospital and WWTBAM should have been dropped for an ITV News Special.

I wouldn't have cut into Emmerdale though, that should be saved for more urgent stories. Running the speech as live at 7.25pm would have been perfectly acceptable.

Tonight's ITV News at Ten should be extended but they've now made some sort of promise that there will be a regional bulletin at 10.30pm, so I'm not sure if it will be extended.

They will get their chance at ten and personally I would question whether the last 2 hours have been One of the most dramatic and decisive events to occur in Britain - about 100 minutes of that was helicopter shots of cars and opinion/speculation.

Whilst ITV may not have ditched programming, ITV ditched a commercial break to show that news flash @ 9pm - I think they handled it pretty well.

LOL a scuffle with a protester behind Libby Wiener.

Were Adam Boulton or Kay Burley around?

Chris Ship was on Sky News for quite some time today too as their camera focused on the Cabinet Office had him in full view.

Does that bloke with grey hair work for ITN/ITV? Very unprofessional if he does/did.

[media:c7db75f5a6]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/davidlees/itv_news_protest.flv[/media:c7db75f5a6]


He couldn't keep still. He was either cold or needed a pee.

Although, after much discussion about whether or not ITV should have broke in to the schedule tonight, I want to say that it was a really good News at Ten tonight!

It's done the reputation of ITV News no favours at all - and it struggles enough as it is. It's not so much about covering the event itself, but being part of the story - and ITV News just wasn't tonight. When people remember this moment, it'll be Dimbleby and co. they remember - nobody saw it through ITV's eyes.

Now, obviously for many people big events do play out through the BBC's eyes, but for me when I think of events like 9/11™, the Beslan massacre and the Iraq War, it's the ITV coverage I recall - and hence the reason I favour ITV for most things nowadays and would have preferred to see tonight's events covered by them. Snubbing it just means they'll find it even more difficult to compete with the BBC in covering such events in the future.

Broadcast are saying that the BBC got nearly 10m (presumably a peak not average) audience for their handover of power coverage. (The One Show broke into one of their films and handed to Dimbleby, and then BBC One dropped EastEnders and Holby)

You can argue ITV's decision two ways.

1. Because the BBC did it, ITV1 didn't have to, and were offering an alternative.

2. ITV1 would have had to have dropped ad breaks (and would not have matched the BBC audiences) and would have lost money if they had ditched their schedule.

Does seem a shame that the BBC now no longer have any decent mainstream news competition (Sky's ratings are pretty low these days - and whilst important among opinion formers - the hope that it might rival BBC News seems to be further away than ever...)

I agree entirely - brave decision by the BBC to jettison two of their most popular programmes but the influence of the 24 hour news channels and, it has to be said, the BBC's continual scheduling of news specials on BBC One partly in promotion of the news channel has created an expectation that every unfolding event needs to be covered on the main channels, at a time when virtually everyone now has access to rolling news channels in one form or another. Up until about ten years ago this wasn't the case. ITV would have lost an awful lot of breaks just to show cars travelling backwards and forwards when they key events - Brown and Cameron's speeches - can easily be covered in News at Ten. Whilst breaking into the daytime schedule might have been possible it's madness to do the same in peak, no matter how weak that night's schedule is, particularly when everyone is already watching the other side.

I seem to recall coming home from school on the afternoon after the May 1979 election. ITN had live coverage of Thatcher's speech outside No 10, and I'm sure BBC 1 and 2 were showing Test Card F, I remember being surprised, but it was 31 years ago, and I might have got events muddled ?

Yep - and the interesting thing is that when simulcast on both, everyone watches BBC One, as the audience rockets. (Though the main election show was an interesting blip in this as nearly 1million watched on the BBC News Channel, instead of BBC One or BBC HD)

Putting a News Special on BBC One does still generate huge figures relative to the channel - and that means, presumably, that the mainstream audience still wants to watch this stuff, but won't find it on the continuous channels?



I think the argument is that everyone is watching the other side I guess - ITV News has dropped massively in reputation in the last decade in the UK. Witness the huge drop in figures for their election show this year compared to 2005/2001/1997 etc.

ITV may have got decent figures if they'd carried the events unfolding - but without ad breaks they would have not converted into revenue, and I doubt they'd have increased on Corrie/Emmerdale etc.