ITV to trim programmes

I am not too bothered if episodes are 30 seconds shorter - its not as if they will be cutting any footage out, each episode will be filmed 30 seconds shorter.

I think people will welcome this as the soaps are on too often anyway, Emmerdale should be 3 nights a week (next week its 6 nights!) and Corrie should remain as 4 not go up to 5.


Apparently trimming 30 seconds out and we will lose approximately 4 episodes worth per year.

I'm not too bothered whether programmes are shortened by a number of seconds/minutes. What bothers me to the max, is programmes failing to start and end on time.

This can prove a major inconvenience in today's technological world where people using VCRs and PVRs missout or have incomplete recordings where the BBC or ITV and other TV companies fail to schedule programmes within their alotted time slots. Surely it is not rocket science to schedule programmes and where appicable advertisments/previews etc. to run on time.

The thing I'M worried about, though, is whether the other stations will ALSO run to schedule, or take ITV's change as an oportunity to "spoil".

This evening, for instance, BBC1 deliberately let Holby run to about 21:03 in order to spoil the top of ITV's 21:00 programme, which DID actually start on time.

'Er indoors was juggling recorder remotes like in a circus, in order NOT to miss the ends and beginnings of either of the programmes.

Made me miss the top of 2W News and Sport in the middle of all the juggling, so NOBODY ended up happy.

I just hope that sort of thing doesn't become the norm.

So the solution to your problem is to have 2 television receivers or a television receiver with two tuners in order to provide the "picture in a picture" facility.

Apparently, LBJ used to watch THREE televsions at the same time (ABC, CBS, NBC).

They could follow the example of ARD Das Erste, TF-1, France 2, etc etc, and have the main news at 20:00h.

I quite like that idea of having the main news at 8pm. But I would feel that a second late night bulletin was needed like the return of the late news as 11pm. With ratings focussed on the 8pm but the 11pm just to provide news coverage. Obviously in sporting events, football mainly, they couldnt broadcast the 8pm bulletin on itv1, though they could do headlines at half time and a plug for the news on the itv news channel.

They could then have a documentary, comedy, wildlife or arts programme at 8:30. the now 8 o'clock hourly programmes like the bill, millionnaire specials, etc at 9pm, dramas, comedies, light entertainment, quiz shows, and such at 10pm with the news at 11pm followed by other shows.

8pm will never happen I'm sure, it's a key battle ground for primetime. If you hold the audience at 8pm, you are likely to keep much of that audience for the rest of the evening. Putting the news out at 8pm would just mean the BBC shifting Eastenders to that time and ITV losing any audience inheritance from Corrie.

Nigel Pickard is understood to want a permanent slot for the news, and I think 10.30pm looks favourite.

Most people who complain about the news moving about are generally those who just look at the schedules but don't actually watch ITV1, as has been seen people who do watch then don't like films to be broken in two halves

There really is a problem with every slot, looking at 10.30pm:

- Can't show 2 hour long post-watershed dramas
- Can't show long films without a break
- Late night stuff (like Frank Skinner, Harry Hill etc), would it go at 10pm or 11pm?
- An odd 45 min slot following football

I've said before how I'd change ITV1's schedule

5.05pm ITV News Today
5.30pm Regional / Stranded programme
6.00pm Regional News
6.30pm Early evening programmes
7.30pm Emmerdale
8.00pm Coronation Street
8.30pm ITV News Tonight
9.00pm Post-watershed programming
11.00pm (approx) ITV News Headlines; Regional News
11.15pm Late night programmes

When football is screened, the soaps are dropped and the news is screened at 9.45pm. The late night summary generally airs at 11pm, but can be earlier/later to fit into the schedule. Programmes like The Bill would air at 9pm, while mainly comedy and lifestyle programmes fill the 6.30pm slot. Tonight with Trevor McDonald would return to it's once a week hour-long format, with occassional half-hour spin offs called The Tonight Report.

They've allready pulled that trick - end credits now have strict maximum running times of 30 seconds for prime time programmes and 20 seconds for daytime programmes. Most credits have allready been commuted as much as possible (programmes like Bad Girls used to have much longer credit sequences in the pre-generic days). Ditto title sequences, almost nothing has a particularly lengthy title sequence anymore. I don't really see that they can do much more without resorting to making title sequences little more than stings and end credits so fast/so packed that they become totally meaningless just like they are in America (if you're going to shove 20 names on the screen and leave them up for less than half a second, you might as well not bother at all).


There are sanctions from the ITC (and the BSC) if programmes don't run reasonably to time (they are, IIRC, allowed to start no more than 1 minute early and 2 minutes late). The problem is, that they are based on the channel's internal schedule:

All channels have two schedules, an internal schedule and a published schedule.

The idea is that the published schedule contains 'more or less' times for programmes, wheras the internal schedule contains exact to the second timings (and also schedules non programme items such as commercial breaks, continuity links etc). It does make sense - it's a lot better for clarity to say that Coronation Street starts at 19:30 even though it might actually be planned to started at 19:29:53. It also makes sense to just have 'Coronation Street' as a single item, rather than also say that there is a break at 19:42:45, followed by trailers, followed by commercials, etc.

The problem however, is that ITV (and others) have recently cottoned on to the fact that, instead of having a seperate published schedule for clarity, they can use it to tell blatant lies.

When News at Ten starts at 22:07 even though it's billed as starting at 22:00, 9/10 this is planned from the outset, they told a blatant lie with the scheduling.

But since the ITC only judges their accuracy on the basis of their internal schedule, there is presently nothing that can be done about it, since they are keeping to the times which they set for themselves.

I do agree though that this should be changed to stop ITV (and any broadcaster for that matter) to, frankly, spout b**locks about the times that their programmes start.

Either that, or they should be forced to make internal schedules available, so that some enterprising outfit can publish the 'real' listings guide.

Thats a bit of an exaggeration, News at Ten generally starts at 22:04.

I notice it too - I call it 'Helium Mode' playback!!