BBC TV Centre & elections (off-topic)

I believe that he presided over the ITV Coverage in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Over the majority of these years Jonathan Dimbleby had his own programme that aired on Sunday mornings on ITV.

EDIT: I've found some clips on YouTube, and they've tried different ideas for their election coverage over the years.

1997: Jonathan Dimbleby with Michael Brunson - a lovely use of the large area at the bottom of the atrium with an audience. I haven't watched through, so I'm unsure if the audience was present through the night.

(Starts about 1:00 in following a rather nice trailer from Carlton)

2001: Jonathan Dimbleby with John Sergeant. This is the first one that I remember viewing and I loved the set up for it. The same desk as 1997 (or it appears to be) but raised up with a hub of computers set up beneath it, the same hub idea that was repeated in 2005 though they opted to use the theatre of news studio rather than have the desk as part of the lower atrium.



2010: Alistair Stewart took the helm with what I thought was wonderful coverage. Fast results, wonderful panelists that changed through the night, a wonderful theme and great set (especially compared to 2005 - i found that desk to be ugly, especially within the rounded theatre of news.




And going back a little bit further...
1992: Jon Snow hosted with Alistair Stewart the ITN Election coverage - how times have changed.

His show started back in 1993. I think it replaced waldon. It's strange to think it was Jon snow who did 1992.

Jonathan Dimbleby actually started in 1995. He was part of ITV's election coverage in 2010 as well, albeit not on the night - he hosted weekly debates during the election under the title of Campaign 2010.

It's not so unusual Jon Snow presented in 1992, Peter Sissons was co-host in 1983 and 1987 while presenting Channel Four News. There were far more links between them in those days, they would always plug the C4 News at the end of the News at 5.45, and of course in 1992 the ITN coverage continued on Channel Four when TVam took over on ITV.

Was I getting mixed up with his time on "On the Record" before that, Im sure he deffo replaced walden.

Obviously I don't know the finer points of ITV's accounts, but I can't help thinking a better idea would have been to move ITV's offices to another location, probably somewhere new build but in a less high profile location, keep the London Studios as it is, and then convert the entire tower to residential accommodation.

The problem with that is, its all connected, plus that building over 40 years old, how much would it need to bring it up to code and a change of use. Im surprised there can rent office space at TVC

Matthew Parris replaced Brian Walden.

I thought Walden come back in the early 90s for the Walden interviews?

Yes he did. And then stopped doing them at the end of 1994, with Jonathan Dimbleby taking over in January 1995. I don't know when he stopped doing On The Record, or what he did in between. I'm not his mum.

According to BBC Genome, Jonathan's last OTR aired on 18 July 1993, with John Humphrys' first edition airing on 19 September.

I've always liked the Jonathan Dimbleby theme tune (so to speak), composed by Francis Monkman. It'll probably always be underrated, though, thanks largely to OTR's theme (and, of course, the croc)...

That audience was made up from some of 'The ITV 500', a panel of members of the public who were used on the channel throughout the campaign. More than ever before there'd been an attempt to get TV debates going during the 1997 election and they were supposed to be a part of it. It didn't quite happen as hoped in the end, but they did get to separately grill Blair, Ashdown and, erm, Michael Heseltine (some parallels with May sending Amber Rudd to the BBC debate this time around - if Labour need some encouragement to get Jeremy Corbyn to appear on it, they might want to take a look at the reception Heseltine got when asked why John Major didn't turn up back then).

Not sure how involved they were in the election night coverage itself. Probably quite a useful way to fill some time during the first couple of hours but less so once the results started coming in thick and fast.

Of course, there have been other examples of other people standing in for leaders in election coverage. In 1987, Thatcher refused to appear on the Beeb's On The Spot programmes when Kinnock and Steel did, because they were presented by Sue Lawley and she'd refused ever to be interviewed by her again because she thought she'd stitched her up with Diana Gould in 1983. So Norman Tebbit did it instead, although after it he refused to be interviewed by Lawley again because he thought she'd stitched him up during it.