News at Ten - Weeknights on ITV1

God, no wonder itsrobert quit considering lately you've not been allowed to have an opinion around here!





True - the only other factor I'd guess is how ITV1 is performing after News at Ten too - are viewers sticking with the channel for it's late night schedule.


I think it's also worth pointing out News at Ten has been let down a bit this week by the 9pm dramas - it wasn't really until Thursday that any got the kind of ratings ITV would be looking for, and News at Ten benefited alot from the healthy inheritence.


Personally I still think Trevor McDonald is a big turn off factor - last nights Late News showed how much better Mark Austin really is.


I do hope though that when Mark does take over full time with the renewed emphasis on News at Ten he does quit the Evening News.

To be honest having Mark on the Late News last night made it seem like a regular Evening News bulletin, with modified set decoration. Am I the only one on here who used to like his presenting style? And to be honest I'd prefer even Trevor (yes, I know I'm probably going to get lynched for saying that).

Julie on the other hand has settled in well, and I'm growing to like her.

I think Julie is excellent - calm, dignified, knowledgeable and authoritative.

Whatever anyone says about Trevor, I think he's great. The last of the old-school news presenters with real gravitas.

Christine, I realise that you have got your facts right, but the undeniable implication of your posts (intentional or otherwise) was that News at Ten was a disaster for ITV.

Monday can be ignored, as it was the first day, and Wednesday was admittedly not great. But Tuesday and Thursday were both highly successful, and two outta three ain't bad. Few expected NaT to outperform the BBC's 10. The fact that it has managed to beat ITV1's average 10pm ratings last year is success enough for ITV.

Did ITV beat the BBC? No
Did anyone expect them to? No
Does it matter? No


Was it? Obviously to pres-heads it was a notable difference, actually being branded "Weekend News" on the titles, but it may not have been as widely noticed by everyone else. Also (if I remember correctly) it was presented by a weekend presenter, as opposed to John Suchet or Trevor McDonald. I always felt that the Weekend branding somehow belittled its status.

Tieing The Late News in with News at Ten by using the same branding (which is recognisably different even to non-pres fans) and by having the weekday anchors gives the programme an air of equal importance to NaT. I think audiences will generally be accepting of a later bulletin on a Friday night, with the same look and feel of NaT.

I prefer Trevor and Julie, I thought Julie was excellent presenting live from Heathrow on Thursday. I disliked Mark and Julie on the Late News, Mark in my opinion didn't suit the bulletin, his presenting style ruined it. I'm not sure how to write about it, but I hope you get the point.

Hopefully though, when he does anchor the News at Ten with Julie, he will be dropped from the Evening News. Like he was on Friday, Steve Scott presented instead of him.

I think that both the BBC and ITV are going to be very pleased with this week's results. I'd say the BBC's ratings are more impressive as they haven't lost viewers despite the competition. The promos may not have gained them viewers overall but I don't think that was the point - I think the point was to stop people leaving them out of curiosity for News at Ten, and since they kept their audience they did what they needed to.

However, aside from the Wednesday figures ITV did well also, beating their previous 10.30 figures against established opposition, though I'd dispute pickle104's view that no-one expected NAT to beat the Ten, several posters on here, me included, said they thought it would win in the first few weeks.

Not sure that's entirely true. Can anyone put any figures on that? I was under the impression that the BBC's Ten regularly exceeded 5m viewers. I think it may have only done that once this week. I'm pretty sure that the BBC have lost viewers.

Agree Julie has settled in very well.




It wasn't just the branding though - it was the fact it had a regular presenter from the main ITN team - initially the likes of Katie Derham and Nicholas Owen, but not long after John Suchet took over fronting the Sunday and Friday editions, along with being Trevor's News at Ten stand in.

And also the scheduling - the Saturday shows were in the more traditional 5.30pm/11pm approx slots, not pushed out to the boundaries of primetime with bulletins at 4.30pm and 11.45pm - and now even the long standing Sunday 6.40pm bulletin, often the highest rated of the week, has now been pushed out to 5.30pm to make way for Dancing on Ice.


The weekend presenters now are rarely even part of ITN's B-Team, never mind amongst the first choice, and you don't know who you're going to get from one weekend to the next.





They're sending out conflicting messages though - the scheduling suggests it's the weekend, the look suggests it's a weeknight. They've got to make their minds up really.

I haven't taken to Julie in the studio, I find her slow and steady delivery rather dull, but she was very good at Heathrow. Perhaps she needs to be given more to say and less time in which to say it.

Trevor McDonald has been better than I expected.

Well this press release says 4.9 million in 2007, while this says 4.8 million for this week, so only a very marginal loss.

This may have been mentioned, but I find the editing to the theme tune for the NAT for the Late News yesterday. Anyone else notice just before the headlines it went "dum , dum" x 2? Normally this is x 3.

Poor. How hard is it to change the clockface to 11 for God's sake?

Not hard necessarily, but money I expect.