ITV News

You won't see many others do it, but Alastair has done it quite often over the last few years - certainly presenting the lunchtime and late bulletin then either the Evening News or London Tonight.

Ahd when you think about it, the on-screen time of 1.30pm-10.30pm (did he do the 11.25am summary BTW?) isn't a huge step up from his former commitment of being on the ITV News Channel at 10am then finishing London Tonight at 6.30pm.

I sincerely hope that this plan doesn't materialise but nothing would surprise me with ITV...

ITV considered replacing half of evening news with gameshow
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/18/itv-early-evening-news

Oh god.

Well, I see 623058's "daily turd in the chief exec's mailbox" technique worked.

Now all they have to do is hose down Barrymore and sober him up.

I am shocked at that. As noted it is their most watched news programme and they wanted to chop it in half. They could start by moving or reducing Emmerdale and bring back The Price is Right or whatever used to fill the 7pm slots.

Don't forget the early evening news used to only be 15-20 minutes when it was at 1740

Get Adrian & Christine to present a news magazine show week nights instead of the ITV News and get new presenters for Daybreak?

Firstly I never sent them a email about this, also the current plans; STV expanding there 30min local news slot, we up north not getting any of the new offerings. I think you will still be safe for now

I take that on board, but the plan here would see the whole hour of news being cut in half, at least when it was at 5.40pm there would be still be anywhere from 50 minutes worth up to 1 hour and 20 minute's worth depending on where you lived.

Granted ITV aren't going to keep the status quo, but if they had to axe bulletins, I'd rather see the Daybreak and lunchtime bulletins sacrificed before making any cuts to the main 6pm editions.

A bit ironic that this story was published on the same day as a press release from STV announcing to increase the amount of Local news on air north of the border.

Well I don't think Daybreak can be axed or cut as its part of the Breakfast franchise and nothing to do with ITV News as such. I remember the lunchtime news used to be 60minutes long, so maybe it can be cut from 30mins to more of an update and extended when needed.

I meant a real jobbie in a letterbox - but either way I was kidding.

Certainly the news of STV's enhanced proposition juxtaposed against this really shows the gulf between the two broadcasters.

Yay for STV.

Worth noting it's "consultants" who considered the move - ITV seem to have told them to get stuffed. The prospect of a merged local/national programme seems more likely, but I'd hope this is a non-starter really.

I’m not really sure how fair it is to compare the two broadcasters.

I think ITV has probably been under far greater commercial pressure than STV when it comes to reversing the decline in audiences, advertising and profits because all these factors help determine the size of ITV’s programme budget, and ultimately it’s the programmes produced, commissioned and/or purchased by ITV that largely determine the success of the entire network, not those contributed by STV.

So a bit of me can understand why scaling back news might have been mooted – but as Brekkie points out, the proposal to reduce evening news output didn’t even come from ITV itself, but from an external consultant brought in to look at cost cutting.