ITV News

Ratings for ITV News At Ten seem to be ok. It does seem to depend on what programme is on before it most of the time.

Wednesday 28th October
22:00 - News at Ten and Weather: 2.5m (12.7%)

Last Night
22:00 - News at Ten and Weather: 2.8m (14.8%)

(data from DS Forums)

I am happy they brought News at Ten in line with the rest of ITV News. It only makes sense from a viewer's and ITV perspective. It brings the brand together, that can only be good.

"News At Ten" could have be on any channel, BBC News At Ten, ITV1 News At Ten, Sky News At Ten etc. Viewers can now relate to News At Ten on ITV.

Also, the News at 6.30 seems as important as the News At Ten now aswell.

Good move ITV, ITN.

Well, that's how it's now (seems to rhyme...):

- the BBC renamed (year ago) all bulletins as 'BBC News at X'
- ITV 'did' 'return' News at Ten, also year ago
- Sky News introduced NaT to fill the space left after ITV's News at Ten in 1998/9.

Just a simple coincidence?

Think the new look is strile and they have got rid of the best bit of the show - the music. It sounds a club remix. Very poor - typical ITV though... you have a classy look and what do they do, ruin it!

Interesting effect on the panel on the right hand side of the desk as they pan around it - you can see that the physical desk has more yellow on it than the virtual one.

Interesting - I hadn't realised that the desk was partially virtual, but you can see the difference between the real desk and the VR desk sides on the camera right hand side of the desk during that closing move - as you see the edge "break up" a bit.

Are they making the desk "bigger" - or is the entire front of it - including the rostrum (aka baking tray) and underlighting virtual?

They also appear to be struggling with the chroma-keying of the desk reflections - Julie's reflection is breaking up quite noticably on that move (so you see the virtual reflections of the background bleeding through)

BTW article about the rebrand here :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2009/nov/02/itv-news-revamp

The comments are worth reading as well...

I particularly like :


I'm not convinced by ITV's "human interest" led approach with "close cropped" images... It is how the US networks started going down the road of parochial, "news you can use" style coverage, hugely reducing the quality of their coverage, particularly of world stories (but not exclusively)

Personally I'm not a huge fan of VR sets - they have applications for some applications like analysis of voting during Elections, but as a day-to-day studio environment they still don't deliver.

I wonder if Robert could tell us if the powers that be are tweaking any of the things that viewers have felt a bit let down by, or if they are powering on with the new direction. My faults are:

- The slightly sensationalist slant ITV News has reclaimed with the "human interest" stuff. This would be easy to tone down A LOT

- The oversized straps. I have mocked up how they should look:
http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upload/uploadFiles/idea_1.jpg
http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upload/uploadFiles/idea_2.jpg

I also think they should start:

- Referring to the ITV News at Ten as the ITV .. News at Ten, not the ITV News.................. at ten. They should not ditch this part of the branding, "News at Ten" was loved and will be missed. Even reintroducing it to the bulletins reports, so "Daisy McAndrew, ITV News at Ten" would be a welcome move.

- Darkening the set slightly throughout the day. At the moment it's identical but if it darkened even a smidgen it would individualise the bulletins whilst keeping them under the one umbrella.

I'm afraid I don't know whether any tweaks are being made. As far as the voiceover and "ITV News...at Ten" goes, I'm not entirely sure this was intentional. I've uploaded a sample of the female version that was going to be used initially and you can quite clearly hear her say "ITV News at Ten" without a pause (click here). The resulting pause in the male voiceover may have just been inserted unintentionally by James Faulkner.

I actually prefer the female announcer, it doesn't sound dumbed down or less authoritive.

I hope that if there are any tweaks, they decide to slowly animate the map in the background. Also, I think the 'beams' are a little flat, and look too fake. I don't know, the set isnt great and I wouldn't call it an improvement on what we've seen before. That said, I don't hate it.

I don't actually see any problem with the big graphics, I kind of like it! Its different at least.

Has Alastair Stewart forgot how to speak? It was a right mouthful at the end.....even "Have a good weekend"!! That was quickly corrected

I don't usually catch the Lunchtime news but I'm off this week and obviously tuned in to see what all the relaunch fuss was about - has Alastair Stewart always been this shouty when he presents on his own? It turns very Chris Morris at times as if he's about to launch into "THIS IS THE NEEEEEWS". I think Alastair is a great presenter but I felt myself cringing at points just because he turned into a cliché of himself.