ITV News at Ten
ITV News at Ten is the flagship evening news programme on British television network ITV, produced by ITN and founded by news editor Geoffrey Cox on 3 July 1967. The bulletin was the first permanent 30-minute news broadcast in the United Kingdom, and although initially scheduled for only thirteen weeks due to fears that its length would turn viewers off, the bulletin proved to be highly popular with audiences and became a fixture of the ITV schedule.
News at Ten rose to popularity for its winning combination of in-depth, analytical news coverage and populist stories, as well as for its use of Big Ben's chimes to separate news headlines in its opening sequence. It simultaneously helped popularise newscasters such as Alastair Burnet, Andrew Gardner, Reginald Bosanquet, Sandy Gall, Anna Ford, John Suchet, Mark Austin, Alastair Stewart and Trevor McDonald into well-known television personalities.
When the bulletin was axed in 1999 in order for primetime entertainment programming to air uninterrupted, there was a public outcry. ITV reluctantly brought the programme back – under the name ITV News at Ten – in 2001, airing it at 10 pm for a minimum of three nights per week, but eventually replaced it with the ITV News at 10.30 in 2004. It was not until January 2008 that News at Ten was reinstated to the ITV schedule. The programme has been anchored by Tom Bradby since 2015.
History
1967 to 1999: the original run
ITN had been ITV's news provider since the channel's launch in September 1955. News updates from ITN tended to run 14 minutes in length at most, with no fixed broadcast time. From his arrival in 1956, ITN editor Geoffrey Cox had consistently argued to the Independent Television Authority that ITN should be providing at least one news bulletin of substantial length, in order to cover and analyse major news stories more closely. ITV argued against the idea of a 30-minute evening bulletin, insisting a news programme of such length would eat into its primetime entertainment schedule and turn viewers away from the channel, but the ITA granted Cox's wish in 1967. ITV stations reluctantly agreed to give the proposed bulletin – a Monday-to-Friday programme, fixed at 10 pm – a 13-week trial run to test its success.News at Ten began broadcasting on 3 July 1967 under the editorship of Cox, who stipulated that the aim of the new programme was to "remove the spin and bring facts and the news as it really was". ITV's stance was seemingly confirmed early; the programme had little news to cover in its first few editions, having launched in the middle of summer during a slow news week. However, a reversal of fortunes quickly took place after an "action story" from ITN reporter Alan Hart on Colonel Colin Mitchell's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders re-entering Crater, which ran for a then-unheard-of length of 5 minutes. A series of similar in-depth reports eventually helped to give News at Ten a regular viewership of seven million every night, forcing ITV to keep the programme. By 1969, News at Ten had become the first news bulletin in Britain to enter the top 20 most-watched programmes of the week. It was tied with Coronation Street as the second most popular television show for the week of 27 September 1970 with 6.90 million viewing homes, behind Special Branch.
The arrival of the new 30-minute programme allowed ITN to give a more in-depth and detailed treatment of serious news for the first time on British television, as well as coverage of populist stories and issues that would attract the viewing audience. The programme built on these concepts by introducing reporter packages, not the norm then but now a staple of television news, and a team of two newscasters taking turns to read stories instead of a sole presenter: a two-man team would inject personality into television news, as well as allow breaking news to be handed to the newscaster not in vision. The original newscasting team included Alastair Burnet, Andrew Gardner, Reginald Bosanquet, George Ffitch and Leonard Parkin. News at Ten also employed several other distinctive features which proved popular with viewers: the use of Big Ben's chimes to separate the news headlines being read in the opening sequence, and the "… And Finally" report – a quirky and often humorous end piece designed to send the viewing audience to bed "on a high note" after 30 minutes of hard news coverage.
News at Ten developed a solid reputation for its extensive coverage of international news stories. Foreign correspondent Sandy Gall, the first ITN journalist to cover the start of the Vietnam War in 1965, returned there on several occasions to produce reports for News at Ten until he was forcibly removed from the country following the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Michael Nicholson reported in-depth on the 1976 Soweto uprising for News at Ten, and later went on to cover the Falklands War in 1982, after which he was awarded the South Atlantic Medal for his work. News at Ten, by now the UK's most popular news programme, ultimately forced the BBC to follow ITN's lead and extend its own programming to match, although Lord Annan declared in his 1977 Committee into the Future of Broadcasting, "We subscribe to the generally held view that ITN has the edge over BBC News."
In the absence of Alastair Burnet, News at Ten paired Andrew Gardner and Reginald Bosanquet to create one of the programme's most well-liked newscasting duos. In 1978, Anna Ford became the bulletin's first female newscaster, and Alastair Burnet rejoined the programme in the same year. For more than a decade onwards, Burnet was the newscaster most associated with News at Ten, his "serious persona", "sepulchral tones" and "deferential interviewing style" becoming respected hallmarks of the programme. By the late 1980s, Burnet – now a member of the ITN board of directors and News at Tens associate editor – began to draw criticism that he was losing the personal touch with his audience, allowing News at Ten to settle into a "stodgy" and "old-fashioned" complacency. Nonetheless, the programme continued to maintain a solid high audience during the 1980s and well into the next decade.
The development of satellite technology in the 1980s allowed News at Ten to broadcast live from several locations around the world, including the Great Wall of China during a visit from the Queen in 1986. Alastair Burnet presented News at Ten from the United States during several presidential campaigns, as well as the 1984 conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties. Alastair Stewart presented News at Ten live from Saudi Arabia, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the liberated Kuwait City during the 1991 Gulf War.
Burnet retired from ITN in 1991 after several clashes with the ITV companies over the future of the news organisation. In November 1992, News at Ten was given its first major relaunch, in part to address the criticism it had attracted over the last few years. In a bid to regain the personal touch that had been lost, the programme dispensed with the dual-presentation team in favour of a sole newscaster, Trevor McDonald, who subsequently became one of the most well-known newscasters in the UK. Julia Somerville, John Suchet and Dermot Murnaghan each presented News at Ten when McDonald was absent. The bulletin carried this format until March 1999.
Despite News at Tens continued stature and popularity, ITV announced its intention to axe the bulletin in 1993, proposing two new peak-time bulletins at 6:30 pm and 11 pm. ITV justified the move as a measure to stem the decline in television viewing audiences and to allow the uninterrupted broadcast of movies, dramas and other entertainment programmes, but the plans were met with widespread criticism from viewers, several Members of Parliament, the then-Prime Minister John Major and the National Heritage Committee. The Independent Television Commission ruled that ITV had not established a solid case for the removal of News at Ten, pointing to BBC News having experienced a larger viewing decline than ITN, but were restructuring the contents of their news programmes rather than move them to different timeslots. The proposals were eventually withdrawn after the ITC threatened ITV with legal action.
With the impending end of the bulletin and move to 11pm, proposals included a 60-second bulletin at 10pm on the main ITV channel and a move of the 10pm bulletin to the upcoming ITV2 channel.
1999 to 2008: axing and the ''News at When?'' era
In September 1998, following intense lobbying from the ITV companies, the ITC finally reviewed plans for a new weekday primetime ITV schedule that saw the removal of News at Ten in favour of new 12:30 pm, 6:30 pm, and 11:00 pm news bulletins. The ITC undertook extensive audience research which found that the public preferred News at Ten to stay by a proportion of 5 to 3, but nonetheless granted ITV permission to axe News at Ten for a one-year trial period. The programme's demise in March 1999 coincided with an overhaul of news on ITV, which continued to be produced by ITN, but now branded on screen as ITV News. Trevor McDonald presented the new flagship ITV Evening News at 6:30 pm, a one-minute news summary was broadcast at 10 pm, and this was followed by the 30-minute ultimately resulted in a 13.9% decline in overall viewing figures for ITV News.In 2000, the ITC ordered ITV to reinstate News at Ten to stem the ratings decline. The BBC then decided to cash in on the move by shifting its own long-running Nine O'Clock News to 10 pm. McDonald returned to front the retitled ITV News at Ten in 2001, with a dual-presenting team of Dermot Murnaghan and Mary Nightingale replacing McDonald on the ITV Evening News. However, the haphazard scheduling of the revived 10 pm bulletin ultimately led to its downfall. While the BBC's Ten O'Clock News was fixed at 10 pm for six nights a week, the ITV News at Ten was broadcast for only three nights a week, allowing entertainment programmes to be broadcast past 10 pm for the rest of the week. In addition, the programme was often delayed by overrunning entertainment programmes on the nights that it was scheduled for 10 pm. This inconsistency led to the bulletin being unceremoniously dubbed News at When?
In 2003, ITV received approval from the ITC to axe the programme and replace it with the ITV News at 10:30, fixed at that time every weeknight. McDonald presented this bulletin from its launch on 2 February 2004 until his retirement on 15 December 2005. Mark Austin became the programme's main host from January 2006.