News at Ten - Weeknights on ITV1

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2196955,00.html


Some idiot here posted the other day that News at Ten would return with Trevor McDonald joined by Sky's Julie Etchingham - and we treated it with the pinch of salt it deserved.


But it's true, apparantly!


Pathetic move IMO - it shouldn't have been resurrected the first time, and certainly shouldn't be now. And why bring back Trevor to present it? I can't see Mark Austin being too happy about that - or Mary about Julie for that matter. It's not as if ITV haven't got enough female presenters.


Although ITV News has gone downhill again of late, the 10.30pm bulletin had estabhlished itself better than the previous version of News at Ten and better than the Nightly News.


Let's face it - the only reason it's back is to save ITV a bit of cash in trying to fill the 10pm slot.



The only thing they need to be doing is axing Trevor McDonald and getting Mark Austin in the role ASAP.


And if these rumours were true, where would that leave Julie Etchingham?

Sir Trevor has retired from ITN - end of.

Brekkie the 10.30 is awfully placed. News at Ten returning is a blessing. Now they can focus on 9pm alone without dilemmas of what to put at 10pm.

I am utterly shocked!

They never did find anything that good to fill the 10pm slot so I think this will be a good move - especially if Sir Trev is brought back.

How will Julie fit into proceedings?

I doubt they'll head it together, will they? Probably Julie will do it whenever Trev doesn't. Or they'll do a 3/2 split each week.

I imagine the idea is to mould Julie into a permanent successor - I can't see Trevor being a long-term appointment. Trevor must have faked his retirement then!


I'd much rather have seen Mary - or Nina or Katie - get the job though.


I wonder what will happen to regional news though - will it be integrated again within the half hour, or back floating around at about 11.30pm.


I see this as nothing but a huge backwards step for ITV.

Article says co-presenting....so back to pre 1992 model NaT then....?

It does say a "co-presenter" role though. Well if it's true it all sounds rather good. Julie Etchingham is excellent, it will be like the old days with Trevor and Julia Somerville.

It does need to be at 10pm for the benefit of the structure of the schedule, the slot can't perform any worse than it does at present.

Yeah, it seems as if Trev is just back to get people watching, then he'll probs be phased out after a year or so...

Just thinking - how will Britain's Got Talent etc work? They have notoriously been 90 minutes to include results. Would it go:

9pm BGT
10pm News at Ten
10.30pm BGT Results?

That's all I can see, but 10.30pm is arguably too late. Let's hope this slot is fixed at 10pm like BBC One's - i.e. anchored to the slot, moveable for nothing.

ROFL, I'd love to know just what exactly the network bods think will be different this time , and I'd like to start the first bet that it'll be dumped again by mid-2009.

Perhaps he will do what he does on Tonight and appear briefly at the start and for the end... "Gooodbyee and thank you for watching"