ITV News

It's quite simple when it comes to the news - viewers want the news, whatever the target audience of the bulletin is. When they start messing around with things like The Pulse or viewer generated content (or in the case of Newsnight, the weather!) viewers aren't getting what they want from the news.

Am I right in thinking...Or I could be totally wrong, but in 2009, didn't ITV try beforehand with a female announcer?

I'm sure I've heard it somewhere, but can't remember where....

You're not imagining it, Gaz. It was originally planned to have a female voiceover but it was changed to male at the last minute:

http://up.metropol247.co.uk/itsrobert/femalevoice.mp3

Thank god they never stuck with it! Doesn't have the same amount of emphasis as the male announcer.

Can't really understand why that was dropped, but no preference either way. At least it's not Peter Dickson.

Perhaps it was dropped because the point of the rebrand was to build a cohesive identity for "ITV News" rather "The ITV.. News at [whatever]". In the male version of the voiceover notice how they seemed to have installed a brief pause after "ITV News" and before the bulletin time, something lacking in the female version.

Either way you can't get much better than the early '90s-2004 "voice of God".

Have you only got that onenor have you got the others?

I agree with that. I think his name was Andrew Burt, or similar. In any case, he's never been rivalled since.

Sorry, that's all I have.

Possibly Bruce Hammal's Sky News voiceover equals it! I never understood why it was 'From the studiosnl of ITN, THE NEWS, with *name*' it wasn't even like 'the Early Evening News', just the news

That's not strictly true. Between 1992 and 1995 the script read as "From ITN headquarters, the Early Evening News..." and "From the headquarters of ITN, News at Ten...". Once the 1995 rebrand came around they wanted to make the brand more cohesive and so opted for "From the studios of ITN, the news..." which was used for everything except News at Ten. But that situation didn't persist, as by 1997 the EEN changed to "From the studios of ITN, the Early Evening News...". The Morning News and Lunchtime News remained unchanged though.

As for the Sky News voiceovers - nah, I think I'll stick with ITN's. The Sky ones always remind me of shopping in Tesco as he used to provide some voiceovers on in-store screens. If you want to go even further back, I liked Simon Bates' voiceovers for the ITN News at 5:45. But that's ancient history now.

Is that Victoria Coren?

Anyway, it's a shame they didn't use it.