Abstract
You know where some of the best television is at the moment? It's the news, and specifically the News at Ten on ITV with its new front man Tom Bradby. He's boyish, sure, and charming too, but crikey he can tell a good story. These days, the digital evangelists will tell you, there's no point to the big bulletins – we get our news minute by minute, all the time, on phones, websites, via Twitter and Google. Well, to hell to with that: in fact I would argue that in this age of utterly fragmented and continuous news, the two most single important items in daily journalism in this country are the nightly bulletins, and right now by a mile ITV is the best.
Now I would always watch it over the Beeb's 10, and I think more and more people will start doing the same. The “Tens” are trusted and factual, but they don't have to be dull and worthy too. This stuff should be as compelling as great drama.
Ever since ITV briefly vacated the 10 o'clock slot in the 90s, they have played the junior role to the big Beeb, invariably getting skinned on the ratings, but quite why is now a bit of a mystery. The BBC of course has stunning resources, and some brilliant people, but you can often find yourself drifting off after the first couple of items on their Ten. Not so with Bradby. The set-up is good, the coming items sound great, and the pacing is excellent. Like the great newspaper editors of today such as John Witherow and Paul Dacre, Bradby knows that pacing is all. In the Mail and The Times you want to turn the page to see what's coming, with Bradby's Ten you don't want to let your attention wander because there will be something pretty snappy on the way.
And like the best newspaper editors, the ITN team knows you have to sweat the details. There is nothing lazy about it at all. Take the traditional two-way with a big correspondent. Normally the political editor, say, will be asked in advance what question he would like to get. Characteristically: “So, just how big a crisis is this for the government?” Most TV editors will have been asked this hundreds, possibly thousands of times, giving them the cue to discourse for a minute or two. Not so with Bradby. He will ask different questions, and more important he is happy to interrupt. You can almost hear the surprise at the other end of the line.
This is the other key to the new feel of the ITV Ten. It is more youthful and conversational, it is highly distinctive (it couldn't possibly be the BBC you're watching), and it feels almost interactive as Bradby asks the questions and expresses the sentiments we the viewers are feeling. In an item on the tax credits row, Bradby was happy to admit that it all seems pretty complicated, but “we will try to make some sense of it for you”.
Reporting on the grilling of Hillary Clinton by a US congressional committee, he picked up the real story, which was the grisly incompetence and bickering of the US elders asking the questions. After a superb item about the current hideous outbreak of violence in Israel, Bradby went over to his reporter, remarking: “Well it just seems to be getting worse.” And there can't be a sentient person who's ever watched the news who hasn't thought just that.
In a gripping Rugby World Cup item about the level of injuries and the sheer brutality of the tackling, Bradby said: “A tackle like that is roughly the same as a car crash at 28 mph and if you want to know what that's like, take a look at this.” Cue a two-second film of a 28 mph car crash. After a discussion on the fact that parents were pulling their children out of rugby, an expert opined that maybe tackling would be banned. “Rugby without tackling,” said Bradby at the end with a faintly raised eyebrow. “Now that would be something…”
But besides the conversational feel, the sense that you are settling down in the pub (a very classy pub, this being Bradby) to talk about the day's events, the ITV team know they have to get some heavy hitters. That's why they pursued Robert Peston with such ferocity. And of course Peston's style, although wildly more mannered, is not unlike Bradby's, often improvising, highly chatty, asking the questions you would like to ask yourself. “Pesto” hadn't started at the time of writing, but his arrival will be a big beefy step for the show.
The Tens are so important. They give you half an hour of news that has been thought about, weighed and arranged in terms of what editors think important (rather like a newspaper front page). There's huge judgment involved: 24-hour rolling news, always exalting what happened 25 seconds ago over what happened 10 minutes ago fulfils a different, quasi-digital purpose. In the latest chat about BBC cuts the James Harding camp is saying openly that rolling news on your mobile may totally supplant 24-hour BBC News if more savings have to be made. The News at Tens and news round the clock fulfil totally different requirements: one is to give you a picture of the important things that are happening, the other says, “You've just come out of a boring meeting, and you need to catch up.” They are not in competition: as so often in life it is one and the other, not either/or. Like roast beef and Yorkshire, you might say.
Under Alastair Burnet, Sandy Gall, Trevor McDonald, ITV's News at Ten was part of the national conversation, the water cooler stuff. Bradby wants to make his the same. I hope he does. I think he will.
THE RIVALS
‘Last night they just about managed 2 million (having conspired to lose 4.2 million viewers in a few minutes after the excellent Doc Martin). We were watched by 4.4 million. So it's business as usual, whatever the papers say. Now back to work with a smile.’
Huw Edwards, BBC newsreader, on Facebook
‘I can't disguise the fact that I found the BBC's subsequent response baffling. You are the giant on the block; we get it! But isn't it a good thing that we are trying to innovate and challenge you? Wanting to beat your competition is one thing, but wanting them out of business is another matter altogether.’
Tom Bradby, writing in The Sunday Times