The (old) ITV News Thread

Well if the new faces of ITV News are Mark Austin (needs a personality bypass) and Katie Derham (..........boring) I will certainly be switching off.

Andrea Catherwood is a good, serious presenter, and her career would benefit from a higher anchoring job, but she will be going on maternity leave in the next few weeks. Thats why she has been presenting alot recently.

James Mates is okay, but he is a little nervous.

Well today's ITV News Channel line up doesn't seem to be based on anything. It was supposed to be

0700 - 0800 Owen Thomas
0800 - 1000 Steve Scott
1000 - 1100 Lloyd Bracey
1100 - 1300 Steve Scott
1300 - 1400 Nick Clark
1400 - 1500 James Mates
1500 - 1805 Nick Clark
1805 - 1825 ITV Evening News with James Mates
1825 - 2000 Chris Rogers
2000 - 2100 James Mates
2100 - 2200 Rugby highlights with Chris Rogers
2200 - 2300 Chris Rogers
2304 - 2315 ITV Late News with James Mates
2335 - 0000 Owen Thomas

Instead Nick Clark did 1300-1500 and now Rachel McTavish has come on who wasn't even scheduled at all. They are also rerunning today's England match at 1720.

Also it looks like its John Draper doing Owen's shift next week, is he better than Mark Webster?

I hope he is better than Mark "Okay it's the start of the bulletin lets look down, then look up and start speaking after a few seconds" Webster

I like my daily does of Owen though!

It was nice to see a dual anchored weekend new tonight, with James Mates & Felicity Barr.

I think that James and Felecity work well, I think that they should co-present more often.

Did anybody notice the slight mistake this morning at around 0720 on the News Channel.?. Poor Felecity was trying to read the Papers and the wrong Paper Shot came on. It then moved on to something else and you could hear Felecity make a slight sigh. She then said I hope the Markets don't have any problems.

Felicity is great!! The other day she was presenting and she fluffed her lines and then said "Sorry I'm having a few problems this morning, oh gosh I mean afternoon! I'm really not with it am?"

Notice the two Exclusives on the ITV News today.

Firstly the report from Andrea Catherwood which also featured on Tonight, and secondly ITV were apparantly first with those pictures of the England v Turkey Tunnel fracas. The turkish tv company went a bit overboard with their branding on the pictures though, a massive transparent logo in the centre!

Yes...I saw that. DOG-gone mad!

Incidentally I hear Jonathan Morrell (used to be at Yorkshire and Tyne Tees) is going to be doing some presentation on the ITV News Channel.

I see Romilly Weeks is due to present tomorrow - has she done that before?

I don't think so - must be the only ITV reporter never to have done a shift on the channel!

itv.com describes her as an "occasional presenter on the ITV News Channel", so I guess she has presented before.

I didn't know about her acting career though:

www.pfd.co.uk/scripts/get.py/actors/?actors+WEEKSR