The ITV News Channel is no longer broadcasting

No surprise really.

As for presenters - well it should mean a more dedicated London team.

I'd suggest Nina and Alistair to the 6pm show, with Nina doing the Lunchtime bulletin (once Katie returns to ITV). Rachel McTavish could do the Morning News, then London bulletins throughout the morning, with someone else doing the late London bulletin and staying on to do the overnight ITV1 summaries.


As for ITV News itself - some will obviously have to go, but these will mainly be exclusive news channel presenters. Felicity Barr should be OK with her expanded sport and regular fill ins, while Steve Scott now seems to be the main Weekend News presenter and Evening News stand-in.

Leyla Deybelge is possibly vulnerable - she's been used a bit in the absense of Andrea Catherwood and Katie Derham, but once ITV are back up to full strength I doubt she'll be required. She'd be ideal for something like Five News though!


I doubt we'll see much on ITV2, ITV3 - possibly Evening News Extra and maybe replacing the pointless Showbiz bulletins with news summaries. I'd be happy to see an hourly news update service on one of these channels in the style of the old Five News Updates (which are much missed!).

As for the mornings - ITV3 is a possibility, but GMTV2 currently airs on ITV2. It's possible though that could move to CITV when it launches, considering it's all kids programming.

I think though as much as ITV are to blame, it's also OFCOM who's at fault for allowing companies like ITV to change the use of their space on Freeview from News Channels to repeats and imports. Considering ITV are gifted their Mux space, they should have some obligations too - and as important as news bulletins are to a terrestrial channel, a news channel should be seen in the same way amongst a family of channels.

There's nothing like a good excuse for the channels' rivals to gloat.

Looks like News 24 had the story first too.

I appreciate it was a different regulator (IBA or ITC - IIRC) that allowed BSB to have a "family" of channels which didn't include a news channel. In fact Galaxy (Entertainment Channel) was the only one with any news content and this consisted of narrative bulletins with no visual reports at all. In fact, they probably just got these from Reuters or AP.

Quite fitting that on the day it's announced they'll be no public inquiry into the London Bombings, the ITV News leads on a reality TV betting scam story!


The only good thing to come out of this should be that the ITV1 bulletins will hopefully improve. Certainly with C4 you see the benefits of all efforts being put into the bulletins, rather than 24 hour news.


I think though ITV should be forced to reintroduce a mid-afternoon news summary on ITV1 - having nothing between the Lunchtime News and Evening News is ridiculous.

Nothing to do with Ofcom, they didn't ask for the channel in the first place and it's not a license commitment for ITV.

If they weren't allowed to change what type of programming they put on their bandwidth, like you say, then they wouldn't have been allowed to launch the News channel there in the first place

Who says the job losses are just editorial staff?

What I'm saying is you'd think they'd have to get permission, especially considering the farce over News at Ten with ITV having to get the permission of the regulator to move it - and then the regulator later forcing them to move it back.

Yes, but ITV1 is a regulated PSB channel with license commitments... it can do whatever it wants with everything else

Has the news channel actually mentioned it yet?

I wonder what they will do when it closes down - i'd like to see all the main presenters (not itv1 presenters) around the big desk just having a chat! Then instead of 'breaking news for britain' flying across it would say 'goodbye!'

For me, the likes of Felicity, Leyla, Owen and the random others like Jon Nicolson, Heather McCarthy, Sasha Herriman that made the news channel what it is (was).

How exactly is it Breaking News that PMQs are at 12.00...like every other week? No wonder it's shutting down!

you would have though the News Channel would have broken the news first