ITV Discussion Thread

News at Ten will be back in February four nights a week.

I'd like ITV to introduce weekend presentation running on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, with programming following suit. Brand the Weekend News as such on these days and air it at 11pm.

Any thoughts on weekend presentation?

Not to mention get some lively announcers Not a bad idea, would be like a national version of LWT. lol

So IWT I guess, or more likely "iwt1" - that sounds like a challenge for the mockers.


Not sure it's a great idea though.

I think they need to get a regular presenter to do the national news, and a regular stand in presenter for when they are no available - like Mark and James do for the ITV News at 10.30 currently.

Lunchtime news Need to get put back to 12.30!

We are very much starved for news. If you look at the main 5 channels in Australia they have hour long news progs on just about all channels even on a Sunday, what do we get 20 mins if your lucky. Plus they all have thier own weekday current affairs show Mon - Friday

I think that makes up for the lack of original programming doesnt it in Australia?

*nods and runs away* lol


Don't even start about the current affairs programmes*, Today Tonight and A Current Affair is such trash, in fact The Chaser's War on Everything mocks them.


*figure of speech

Yeah ok but at least they make the effort which ITV don't and you can't make a sweeping statement about all of them. People mock / take the p*** with anything which moves IMO !!

I'm sorry but after watching both programmes I disagree, even fair number on MediaSpy which is similar to TV Forum would agree. It's trashy and tabloid, but ITV News used to be good but has turned into tabloid and scaremongering headlines.

ITV News is rather tablody but if ITV is then what is sky news like the sun newspaper I guess. For any well done in-depth reports it will be always be the BBC but only because we are paying for it. Considering the Aussies don't have to pay a tv license it could be worse. ABC news is not bad btw

Grade on ITV1 2008 and News at Ten:

"The News at Ten's revival is part of it - you don't just move one block of the schedule, this is part of an overhaul of the whole ITV1 schedule for 2008 which we have not yet revealed for commercially competitive reasons, but when people see it, they will see how it fits in to a much more commercially competitive schedule."

"By moving the News back to Ten, we are able to offer our viewers much greater relevance on the channel, providing them with a brilliant news service from ITN at Ten O'Clock which is when they want to watch it. It frees up resources to invest in British production and British drama at 9 o'clock mid-week which we haven't been able to do - it makes a lot of commercial sense."

"People will gravitate on a big news night to the first bulletin on the big channels. They will go to BBC One at 10 O'Clock. They are unlikely to come to us at 10:30."

"I think that the News is slightly different to sporting events where we're head to head with the BBC like the World Cup final. Undoubtedly the BBC has the advantage as the coverage is uninterrupted by commercials. But if our news product is good enough and compelling enough and authoritative enough, I think viewers and consumers are intelligent enough and sometimes welcome to the chance to sit back, relax and watch the commercials. I don't see it as a problem."

"I think undoubtedly whatever the case was for moving the Ten to Ten Thirty did not stack up. If we had the programs to stack in behind it may have worked, but it didn't. We've struggled at 10 O'Clock ever since it was done. The commercial judgement is undoubtedly it was an expensive failure for ITV."

"On Monday, Wednesdays and Thursdays we've been running dramas for 90 minutes and it's actually an unnatural length and not normal. In terms of changing our schedule next year, we're returning to one hour drama series next year and it allows for more natural junctions at 10pm and invites the viewer to make more choices at 10. News on its own doesn't pay for itself but the halo effect it brings to the channel as being a serious provider is very important to us. The changes we're making we do believe are commercially beneficial to us. We're making more of a loss at 10.30 than we are at 10."

Proposed reductions of regional news from 17 to 9:

"I have to reconcile a number of competing dynamics here: the interest of my shareholders, the interest of the audience and the sense of what traditionally ITV has meant to its audiences."

"ITV lost its monopoly in the nineties. We're in a fierecly competitive environment and that old settlement is not economically viable. I have been working with my colleagues to come up with a plan because we do believe there is value for regional news and an important democratic value to offer an alternative to the BBC's regional news. The old map which is an analogue map is just no viable - it's absolutely not viable. What I wanted to do was come up with a model which is about the portability of news gathering now. It will save us £45m a year, still investing £65m a year in Regional News in times when our revenues are threatened. I don't think the viewers will notice."

"The viewers will see will be a regional news program which may well be coming from the Tyne Tees area but the fact that we have plentiful news resources throughout the entire region."

"There is some misunderstanding about what is happening in Border and Tyne Tees. People think we are abandoning Border. That's not what we're doing. We're creating a news service that will cover the whole of the Tyne Tees and Border regions together which combined will be one of the smallest in the country. The average audience for Lookaround is around 60,000 people, which isn't huge compared to, say, Granada. What we will ensure is that the regional services are more equal and even."

"There will be 10 minutes of coverage within the 30 minute program a night dedicated to Border coverage."

Other ITV stuff ...

On movies: "We rarely run movies in primetime now. They can get plentiful movies on the digital channels."

On the BBC: "If the BBC didn't exist, we would be much closer to the American [TV] model and might have to look at how much we spend on News."