ITV News

yes it was the night that the news of the Haiti earthquake was just breaking

This might be of interest to some people here. Once again I'll be live tweeting from the studio floor for the hour up to air of the ITV News at 6.30 tonight. Generally I try to tweet what's going on behind the scenes plus pics in and around the studio. Always happy to answer questions too. Just follow along on Twitter @MattJF or you could also try the hashtag #BehindTheScenes. The ITV News website often provides a digest of the tweets and pictures too. Hope that's helpful.

Weird end to London's late bulletin after News at Ten, instead of the closing regional tune the national tune was played.

Something strange tonight with the national bulletin, no end credits, just a brief second or two of the closing music. No ITN End board either, just went straight to the weather.

I wish ITV would get rid of Ali Douglas "That's the way your news looks", is so unprofessional. News should not be like that, this "There's your" culture is completely wrong and needs stopping.

Most of the Morning News presenters end with that line, not just Ali.

ITV are set to merge regional and national news into one programme across the 6pm hour. Sounds like an interesting move and if done properly it could drag ITV News into 2011. I just hope it doesn't become ITV News with a 15 minute weekend style regional bulletin at 6.45pm. But I have a feeling they'll do this and then apply to OFCOM to scale it back to 30 minutes, freeing up the 6.30pm slot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/13/itv-6pm-news-new-format

Well, lets be clear, currently this is an 'off-air pilot'.
Secondly, I think it's a good idea. It kind of makes sense. But, if the main 'national/international' news story was presented by, for example, Mary and Mark at 6pm, that's in direct competition with the BBC. I don't think ITV are doing this to shorten up their news content either, infact making it a full hour with regional inserts doesn't sound like they'll be any less coverage involved.

Also, maybe its about time ITV went into direct competition with the BBC News at Six. Even now, they're only about 600,000 behind (I think). Most bulletins around the world of the major networks are all in direct competiton, so it would make sense for ITV to do the same. Atleast it would lease some new life and even attract more people, given that they have great anchors like Mary, Julie, and Mark - of course they could also promote the programme with Natasha Kaplinsky being involved, if she becomes a full member of the ITV News team.

And it would be a good excuse for a (much needed) new look!

I'm not sure there would be much difference to the ratings in the short term because as it stands people will either watch BBC News at 6 and then BBC regional news, or they'll watch ITV regional news and ITV News at 6.30. Such a move would just see the same viewers watching ITV News at 6 with regional news at 6.30ish.

I've always thought that regional news should follow national news. It happens on every other bulletin and ITV seem to still be living in the past with that one. And ITV's regional bulletins are more of a magazine show and it makes more sense for that approach (assuming regional news will continue to be 20-30 minutes) to be at the end of the hour.

ITV could potentially reduce costs through this measure. By showing an additional story in the network bulletin their would potentially be a need for less resources in the regions. Scaled across them all this could reduce the cost of the news in total.

You've got a point. Currently for London at least, the regional news is from 6:00 - 6:30, with the Evening News 6:30 - ~ 6:53. If you was to swap the bulletins around that would presumably mean a couple more reports on the national news and a couple less reports on the regional news, but would obviously be cheaper to produce a national report, than 9 or however many regional reports.

I know this is jumping the gun a bit, but if this change did take place, surely they would take the opportunity to rebrand etc again?

I wonder if ITV News will ever break out of the virtual studio in future ?

To me, virtual has lot's of potential, but it's not used to any particular effect now since the 'Theatre of News' frame / platform were taken down, it's just a backdrop.

I think for the next revamp it should be back to bringing in some real elements. Virtual has had it's day.