MediaGrauniad reports that:
ITV is bringing back News at Ten with Sir Trevor McDonald and Sky News presenter Julie Etchingham.
Michael Grade, the ITV executive chairman, has hinted before that he would like to resurrect this much-missed broadcasting institution and it is understood that ITV1’s late bulletin will switch from 10.30pm to its historic home at 10pm next year, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal.
…after Michael Grade admitted in March that getting rid of News at Ten was “a shocking mistake … it damaged ITV more than anything”. The Grauniad also reports that:
The confusion allowed the BBC to move its main news bulletin to 10pm, allowing BBC1 greater sway in the 9pm prime time hour.
…which isn’t quite the whole story. The excellent News at Ten was dropped by shortsighted ITV executives in March 1999 after 30 years of broadcasting, one of whom, David Liddiment, admitted in 2003 that:
ITV would be better off today if it had never tried to move News at Ten. Commercially it would still have a free ride at 9pm because the Nine O’Clock News would still be there, and corporately the political opprobrium heaped on ITV and its shareholders for tampering with a national news treasure would have been avoided. Instead they got the worst of all worlds.
Eighteen months later, after much complaint from all who cared about democracy and choice, ITV was forced to reconsider, bringing back News at Ten at least three days a week from early 2001.
But alas, our story of naked opportunism gone wrong and sort of put right doesn’t end there.
The main villain of this piece is, of course, the BBC, our supposed public service broadcaster. In August 2000, the BBC, led by arch-villain Greg Dyke, taking advantage of ITV’s ill-fated blunder, announced that it would move its flagship Nine O’Clock News to become the BBC Ten O’Clock News from September 2001.
When ITV was forced into sort of doing the right thing once more from early 2001, you’d expect that the BBC, naturally wishing to serve the public, would put its plans to move the Nine O’Clock News in September 2001 on hold. But no, not a bit of it. The BBC, aggressive and anti-competitive as ever, brought its plan forward by a year, with the BBC Ten O’Clock News starting in October 2000.
News at Ten duly returned for three days a week in 2001, but with its shifting schedule it languished against its by now established anti-competitive rival. Eventually, in early 2004, the current ITV News at 10.30 was born – an inadequate compromise, still crowded out by the BBC Ten O’Clock News immediately before it and by Newsnight up against it on BBC2.
With the amalgamation of various BBC News teams into one news operation, let us hope that Mark Thompson, willingly or otherwise, seizes the chance to put this historic wrong right, and bring back the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News – ensuring a choice of prime time news programmes for everyone – a choice of times and a choice of viewpoints, and of course the prospect of the Nine O’Clock News, ITN’s News at Ten and then Newsnight for the real news junkies among us.
It would be good for Britain and good for the British public. Bringing back the BBC’s Nine O’Clock News would be a great first step on the road back to the BBC being a true public service broadcaster at the service of the British people, rather than the expansionist, anti-competitive state-funded monopoly that it has unashamedly been over the last few years.
P.S. Next we need to get dear Sandy Gall, now eighty, back into Afghanistan for ITN! Anyone who remembers his marvellous reports from the 1980s knows he’ll make a better job of it than John “Liberator” Simpson ever could 🙂
I fail to understand why it’s “aggressive and anti-competitive” for the BBC to move it’s news to what it decides is a better slot. After all ITV could broadcast their news at any time without comment. God forbid they could even choose now to broadcast at 9pm.
The business world is full of examples of one player making a mistake and the others moving in to take advantage. That is the essence of competition and it is what makes it worth having. The fact that in this case one player is the BBC is immaterial.
Don’t misunderstand my motivation. The BBC has a dangerous dominance over UK news, both in it’s itself and the fact that it originally trained many staff who find themselves working for a private company.
In this case you are right to castigate ITV but in trying to lay the some blame on the BBC you are misguided.
I don’t understand why ITV didn’t just take up the now vacant 9pm slot. Or, why they still don’t.
TDK, the BBC is supposed to be a public service. That is its only justification for getting preferred treatment. So if it acts like it’s just another competitor in the TV market, trying to beat down the competition and hog the audience, then there’s no reason why it should get government-supported funding when the other networks don’t.
(One could describe the BBC’s actions here as “overly competitive” rather than “anti-competitive” — this matter reminds me of recent complaints about Tesco that they are acting in an “anti-competitive” manner when all they are doing is competing fiercely with their rivals — but the underlying point is the same).
Reynard | 23.10.07 – 10:38 am
No, the theory is that the BBC is supposed to compete with the other networks for audiences, while the commercial networks compete among themselves for advertising revenue.
Without the BBC’s competitive pressure, the commercial networks would simply segment the audience among themselves and then enjoy virtual monopolies among particular demographics.
That’s a licence to print money alright.
the BBC is supposed to be a public service. That is its only justification for getting preferred treatment. So if it acts like it’s just another competitor in the TV market, trying to beat down the competition and hog the audience, then there’s no reason why it should get government-supported funding
I take your point but in this case the BBC would be able to argue that there was an existing public demand for a news service at the prime 10pm slot which was (a) dropped by the free market and then (b) only belatedly reintroduced in a half-hearted manner. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with this argument – the fact that I can easily construct it demonstrates what an easy defence the BBC could muster.
“No, the theory is that the BBC is supposed to compete with the other networks for audiences”
I don’t see that the BBC has any justification for doing that. You can only justify forcibly extracting money from people on the basis that an important public service needs to be paid for. The BBC knows that most of its programming doesn’t pass that test, which is why it comes up with all sorts of reasons to explain why an historical anomaly should continue.
“Without the BBC’s competitive pressure, the commercial networks would simply segment the audience among themselves and then enjoy virtual monopolies among particular demographics. That’s a licence to print money alright.”
What utter rot. And how desperate have BBC defenders become that they resort to dubious speculation about how the free market would operate without bothering to see how it does operate in other countries. Go to Australia (which is more of a free market than here) and see the three main commercial networks desperately competing with each other. None have cornered any demographic segment of the market. None have a license to print money. This really is rich coming from a man who works for an organization that really has been given the equivalent of an officially-licensed money-printing machine.
Anyway, if a commercial station does make a lot of money, it all comes to it voluntarily, because it provides what people want. But the BBC has a license to extract money from me even if I don’t like any of its shows.
“It doesn’t matter whether you agree with this argument – the fact that I can easily construct it demonstrates what an easy defence the BBC could muster.”
TDK, the BBC can (and do) always muster up some quick and easy defence. What matters to me is whether the defence is really any good.
Will any of this matter after the Digital Switchover? Any takers on the BBC removing most of its news from BBC1 & BBC2 as anyone wanting news will be able to get it from News 24. Come to think of it does BBC2 have any news programmes anymore?
Personally, I’d prefer to get news on demand rather than have to wait until a specific time. Conversely news at nine moves the watershed on the channel to 21:30 which is not a bad thing.
The main villain of this piece is, of course, the BBC, our supposed public service broadcaster. In August 2000, the BBC, led by arch-villain Greg Dyke, taking advantage of ITV’s ill-fated blunder, announced that it would move its flagship Nine O’Clock News to become the BBC Ten O’Clock News from September 2001.
I don’t normally make a point of commenting on your otherwise useful blog, but this is the most one-sided, bitter, paranoid and frankly biased piece of guff I have ever read.
It almost makes me want to go off and start a Biased-Biased-BBC blog of my own.
Almost.
Scaryduck, this is one of the most over-the-top and bitter reactions to a Biased BBC post I’ve ever seen. Having a bad morning?
[I apologise for re-posting this from an earlier open thread, but it seems more relevant here:]
OFCOM: “British Sky Broadcasting Ltd (Sky) have applied to remove the three free to air (FTA) channels [including Sky News] that Sky currently provides on the digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform and replace them with five pay TV channels.”
At the moment we get a decent competitor to BBC News 24; this proposal will ensure that BBC 24 is the only round-the-clock News service for the vast majority of viewers.
Anyway, the summary is here:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/…cs/dtv/summary/
It’s open for responses. You DON’T have to answer all the questions (there are a lot).
Anon: 🙂
BBC News 24 is not Al Jazeera free as well? I find that more balanced than the BBC anyway 🙂
Scaryduck old chap, would you like to declare an interest before accusing Biased BBC of being biased, so everyone else can see where you’re coming from as it were? 🙂
The point is, ITV shot themselves in the foot, belatedly realised it, announced plans to re-instate a chunk of News at Ten, then, the BBC, acting against the public interest, brought forward its own plans to occupy News at Ten’s slot by a year just to make sure that News at Ten wasn’t gonna be coming back on a level pitch… thus ended News at Ten and a lot of ITN/ITV credibility – leaving the BBC as the big time winner and the tellytaxpaying British public as losers – less quality news to choose from and yet more BBC news shoved down our throats.
A sad business on the part of ITV, a shoddy, unseemly business on the part of the tellytaxfunded BBC.
The Fat Contractor:
“Come to think of it does BBC2 have any news programmes anymore?”
I think there’s some sort of NEWS programme every NIGHT.
But its name escapes me for now.
Andrew
Scaryduck old chap, would you like to declare an interest
Perhaps he’s the skateboarding duck, who was for so long a staple of the ‘ and now finally…..’ segment of ITN’s ‘quality news’ programme News at Ten.
John Reith
Actually you know Midlands Today first covered the Skateboarding Duck!
People always ask if it was nailed to the board or something, but I can confirm it was free to leap off at any time
“Nation shall speak Peace unto nation”.
Not forgetting the skateboarding duck.
Scaryduck’s supposed to be a good blogger, right? (I seem to remember him being good from the days when I read lots of blogs). So perhaps then he or she could then explain what they find so objectionable about this post? It may be obvious to him that’s it’s rubbish, but it isn’t obvious to me. I can think of 3 or 4 things that Scaryduck might have in mind, but I don’t know which they’re thinking of.
Bah. ITN’s as bad as the BBC (worse, if anything, on Channel 4). But at least it raises its income fairly.
J.Reith wrote “Perhaps he’s the skateboarding duck, who was for so long a staple of the ‘ and now finally…..’ segment of ITN’s ‘quality news’ programme News at Ten.”
Typical imperious, sneery attitude to a news programme that achieved ratings the BBC can only dream about. News at Ten was all about quality, with reporters like Sandy Gall knocking spots off any of Al Beeb’s current line up of duds.
So what if News At Ten had a popular light-ender spot?
Far better to leave the audience with a smile than yawning over some worthy, stuffy, patronising Telly-Guardian nonsense.
David Gregory (BBC) | 23.10.07 – 3:44 pm |
Erm, yes quite right, passed my bedtime,don’t watch it, more of a current afffairs slanging match, er, um (insert excuse for clanger here). 🙂
Not quite what I meant tho’, should have been clearer. What about ordinary news bulletins, do they still exist?
Anyway, do you know if the BBC will ditch news bulletins on the main channels completely come the digital ‘revolution’?