The ITV News Channel is no longer broadcasting

A good majority of ads IMO aren't region specific !

Well, I only mentioned it because if I didn't, someone else probably would.

Actually, a regional ITV News Channel could be very good - even if it's just a 30 minute bulletin at 1.30pm, 6.00pm and 10.00pm, plus bulletins every hour of so during the day.

Regional programming could also move to the News Channel quite comfortably and be improved, certainly in Public Service terms, by moving away from the quaint nature of many local programmes to something like:

MONDAY: Sport Special - covering the weekends sport
TUESDAY: Weekly current affairs programme
WEDNESDAY: Weekly political programme
THURSDAY: Sport Special - midweek highlights, weekend preview
FRIDAY: News week - a look back at the weeks news


Obviously as with everything there is a cost involved, but I don't think it would be much different to ITV's current spending, especially as the programmes I've suggested could all come from the news studio.

Most regions have a similar presenter line-up with one of the 6pm presenters hosting the lunchtime bulletin, and the other the late bulletin, plus one host doing the breakfast / mid-morning summary, so on weekdays you could quite easily have bulletins virtually every hour from 6am-11pm without extra presenters. At weekends you'd possibly be limited to afternoon bulletins.

ITV may be forced to scrap news channel
ITV executives are to meet tomorrow to decide whether to scrap their rolling news channel.
Full story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1903308,00.html

Wow, talk about speed! As has been said before, I doubt anything can be done to save the NC; another overhaul will prove to be ever more costly, and I can't see figures soaring out of the blue any time soon.

Any figures for the NC for this year released yet?

It doesn't necessarily bring in any more viewers and therefore money though does it?

An idea I heard the other day, which I thought to be quite a good one.

Instead of ITV News Channel having to compete with N24 and KY why not change the rules a little and a little reformat. It would basically become a version of BBC World with bulletins on the hour followed by documentories/interviews/in-depth reports. There would be 2 presenters, both working 10 hour shifts (like World) with 4 hours overnight simply using pre-records.
The channel would subsiquently be re-branded as News and Information channel.

I thought it sounded quite good, although whether it would financially workable is another point...

Unfortunately it seems the most likely scenario, and if it will close, I think it would be gone by Christmas.


The other options:
Ends transmission on Freeview, but continues on Sky / Cable - highly unlikely I think
Replaces Men and Motors on Freeview - again, unlikely
Timeshares with Men and Motors on Freeview - the most likely alternative to closing.
ITV purchase new slot for ITV News - unlikely, considering they are now going for around £10m a channel


Also it's worth pointing out that as the ITV/C4 mux is broadcast at 64QAM, there won't be a wealth of extra space available to them after analogue switch-off.

TIMES:

If that is a real figure used within ITV, then management are being misled as to the cost on carriage by creative accounting.

More likely the Times (owner, News International - owners of Sky News) is being mischievous.

What's the betting that the ITV board don't make a definitive decision one way or another tomorrow, and instead there's another half-baked compromise?

The board won't want to be seen to be scaling back commitment to news, but nor will they want to fork out any money to make the NC a semi-credible proposition (albeit never a profitable one).

Whatever, the politics of it all are very strange. Presumably the Scott Chisholm signing and breakfast revamp is some sort of rearguard action from the ITN side of things? Why would the ITV plc management even have sanctioned it when the axe is just about to fall?

Should be interesting to hear what Clive Jones has to say about it all tomorrow night:
www.bfi.org.uk/incinemas/nft/film/6067

Surely ITV can't compete with BBC? They probably have exactly the same news, but with adverts

what about sky then?

plus surely that would apply to every single thing ITV make but they've done pretty well for themselves for the last fifty years

[quote="Hymagumba"]

Not necessarily, because ITV programmes are very different to BBC programmes. But when it comes down to news, I think they're wasting their time, because it's just news. It is bound to be exactly the same, because it is on the terrestrial news programmes