News at Ten - Weeknights on ITV1

Are you going from the start of the ITV1 ident, the start of the opening titles, or the first bong. I switched on at 10pm but didn't take notice of seconds past so don't know.

When measuring the start time of a programme you go from the precise time the programme comes on - not the ident. On both occasions so far, News at Ten's titles have started bang on the hour.

To be fair the Evening News and 10.30pm bulletin has almost always started exactly on time, as did the last version of News at Ten when it was actually on at 10pm.


People seem to forget that the old News at Ten in the nineties at least rarely started exactly on the hour - and even further back you can see examples where they actually use a different clockface showing it started at 10:04 or something.


I doubt the Late News on Friday will start at 11pm exactly either.

Indeed. The programme 'starts' at the beginning of the titles. Please can we forget this "first bong" thing, or "from the ident"! Monday and Tuesday's programmes both started at exactly 22:00:00.

Suspect that was because the story after the markets graphics started with Trevor and a screen with pictures in it. You wouldn't cut from Julie+Screen for Markets to Trevor+Screen for the next story - it would look odd and messy (assuming the technology allows it in the first place)

That is incorrect.

On the first night, the start of the titles (i.e. the globe) began at 10:00:20. Last night it was 10:00:00.

I expect this could go on and on, but I can assure you that it was exactly 22:00:00 on both nights.

Yes, you're right. I have a radio-controlled clock and as the seconds hand hit the top of the hour, NAT's titles came on. They were definitely not 20 seconds late.

News at Ten had 3.5 million viewers last night, BBC Ten O'Clock News had 1 million more.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/16/tvratings.television

Am I right in thinking these ratings are unfair because people who switch off at 10.25pm will bring down the average for News at Ten? I know I don't bother with the regional news, especially with ads in the middle.

The BBC's average is for the whole thing.

People might not bother with regional news on BBC One?

Interesting point. It was widely reported that ITV had 3.8m to the BBC's 4.9m on Monday. But I've also read elsewhere that when taking the average just for the time that both main programmes were on air (surely a fairer reflection?) then it was 4.9m for the BBC and 4.3m for ITV.