UK General Election

I agree a shame about Alastair as he is fantastic with ejection coverage as he is with anything else he does.

One thing is for sure ITV are clearly doing a good job. Lots of planning and preparation into a whole series of programmes, social media and other plans.

I always watch ITV anyway but this looks great.

Let's not get too ahead of ourselves with the result predictions!

A shame but not a surprise considering his lesser role with ITV News now. Would be good to give him the equivalent of the Paxman role though, but it's not likely.

One thing to note is Mary is going out on the road for the Evening News so presumably they might have a co-host in the studio, though that said lately even before the switch to solo host they often did the "other news" round up on location too.

She took early retirement - probably under the redundancy programme along with several other staffers.

So yes - rather well timed!!

Will be interesting to see who ITV have taking Julie's role if she is not on the overnight coverage, perhaps Nina Hossain if they opt not to do the 'opinion room' feature or maybe Mary.

Few more details from the Press Release also it confirms that Political Correspondent, Emily Morgan will follow the Conservative Campaign; Health Editor (& Former Sky News Political Correspondent) Rachel Younger is with Labour; and Senior Correspondent Emma Murphy is with the Lib Dems. I am slightly surprised they haven't deployed Chris Ship in a key role, though he may still play a part we don't know about yet..

Presumably they will use the same studio/set as last time?

Given his royal duties if Chris is involved it's probably better to have him a non-specific general role so should royal news take priority it isn't leaving a gap in their coverage.

I take your point about the advantage of a non-fixed role allowing him to float between the two as and when required. It would be interesting to see what the considerations are when making these decisions as arguably you could say that about any correspondent leaving their normal brief to become a campaign correspondent, for instance Bill Nearly who was international editor in 2010 or James Mates as Europe Editor last time round, or even Rachel Younger from Health this time, all important briefs. That said though, also the likes of Paul Davies have also covered many royal stories as well so unless it was an Abdication Crisis, they could probably get away with his attention being elsewhere for a few weeks.

One option may to be to have him taking over from Peston at some point during the night/morning to allow him to have a rest of course.

Similar situation at the BBC really you would think that James Landale would be a must to utilize given his experience, but arguably his diplomatic brief equally needs the attention atm.

Presumably though he has been replaced as Deputy Political Editor. It is no longer his brief so despite his appearance in the wake of the surprise announcement in Easter week there may be no need for him to feature.

John Pienaar is Deputy Political Editor now.

James Lansdale has (I imagine) more than enough on his plate as Diplomatic Correspondent. His involvement in the coverage so far has been with that hat on as far as I could tell.

As I said I think James has a enough to keep him occupied, though I wouldn't rule out him popping up outside one of the leaders houses on election night or taking similar roles on completely.

In the case of Chris, I think we will see him involved at one point or another also

On Calendar, they are doing an item called "Spill the Beans" where the ITV News coffee wagon is going to tour the region to get people's views on the election. Tomorrow Christine Talbot will be in Cleethorpes.

Well that's a half-baked idea...