Nightshift

Sorry for the double-post, but I think the overnight bulletins in Central disappeared when ITN began providing overnight updates sometime in 1988. Central were one of the first regions to begin overnight or late night broadcasting, and it wasn’t until most regions had started their overnight service that the ITN Morning News and overnight bulletins began.

We’ve discussed before whether regions were allowed to record the news summaries and play them back, as not all regions followed a common overnight schedule. A YouTube clip shows a bulletin rewinding on air in one region (maybe Anglia). I wouldn’t have thought it was a big deal for regions to time shift these summaries but there is always the danger of out-of-date news, especially a developing story, or a region playing back the wrong summary - and this wouldn’t reflect well on ITN. Perhaps they read the bulletins live as often as required, even if they were only being part-networked?

Of course back in those days would anyone really know if a bulletin recorded half an hour ago was out of date?

Well the VT would have been actual video tape back then, so I'm sure some would notice

Though in a story developing that quickly overnight it wouldn't be that much of a problem to rearrange schedules to take a live bulletin.

Would Itn have overridden local news in that case?

Do you mean in the case of Central’s overnight bulletins? If so, it’s important to realise that Central provided a news service overnight because there wasn’t one from ITN at the time. Their bulletins were composite international/national/local, but just headlines of any major stories. If something newsflash-worthy happened, even if pretty huge, I can’t see ITN going on the air overnight in just a couple of regions. I expect it would just be covered by Central and then in depth by TV-am.

You wouldn't need to timeshift a locally produced bulletin, so the risk of it being out of date doesn't exist. You'd always take it live, or have the option to, because it's being produced solely for your prior. The issues of a bulletin being out of date only appear when you're taking a bulletin that doesn't fit into your schedule.

Anyway, in the event of a story being sufficiently big that ITN had produced overnight updates, at a time they didn't provide that as a service, then all bets as to what would happen are off anyway. Schedules would have been ripped up and thrown away long before the "what do we do about the clash between our normal bulletin and ITN's emergency one?" question was being asked.

I would have thought that newsrooms like Yorkshires Calendar would have Journalists / Camera operators on call from their home during the night, particularly in big cities like Leeds and Sheffield.
As many of the staff are now freelancers, many of them will probably not mind getting a call, to hit the road at 03.00.
I would have thought that newsrooms would have at least one member of staff on night shift if only to prepare the early morning bulletins and answer the phones.

Good point. ITN Morning News started in February 1988. It wouldn't have been possible or likely therefore for ITN to break into the national feed. TVAM would have taken over from Central.

https://www.tvark.org/?page=media&mediaid=98824

There wasn't a "national feed" back then. All the regions did their own thing in the early days of 24 hour broadcasting. There were lots of experimental trials of overnight programming in various regions. ITN only started providing news bulletins overnight from February 1988 onward, as you say. But otherwise the programming was different in each region or clusters of regions.

Prior to February 1988 it certainly wouldn't have been possible for ITN to do a newsflash overnight, not without substantial mobilisation of staff, I'm sure. After the ITN Into the Night service began, then it may have been possible. But then again, the 1980s was a very different time to the present day. Whereas we are now used to 24 hour a day rolling news and immediate footage and coverage of breaking news on various devices and outlets, people just didn't expect that in the 1980s. It wasn't a thing. Even when Princess Diana died in August 1997, it was still highly unusual for overnight breaking news coverage. It was usually pretty formulaic.

Interestingly, to pick up on the point about recorded ITN bulletins and newsroom staffing overnight, in the latter days of ITN providing overnight news, the production team would pre-record the overnight summaries after News at Ten. The Morning News would then be produced by a different crew at the start of the new day. In the meantime, editorial staff would still be around overnight to prepare the Morning News and monitor the news wires. And of course MCR was staffed overnight. But other than that, they didn't have a full crew waiting around just in case.

I do wonder after reading that post why it took ITN until 2000 to start its own rolling news channel. Its as though they knew that they simply couldn't provide the same level of coverage as Sky and the BBC. Mind you having said that the ITN News Channel wasn't much cop IMHO.