Abstract
It warmed the cockles of my public service heart to hear that ITV was doubling the length of its early evening news programme this spring, taking over valuable “soap time”. That, plus Channel Five News going to an hour – albeit out of prime time – and the birth of GB News, heralded a life beyond the predicted death of British TV news. In the words of ITV News supremo Michael Jermey: “As Mark Twain might have said, the death of linear has been exaggerated…”
It means an extra 30 staff will be hired by ITN and it’s Nirvana time for news junkies like me. Network news from 6pm to 8pm, five nights a week. ITV news is in a purple patch, the year 2021 bookended by scoops – Robert Moore’s stunning reports on the storming of the Capitol in January and Paul Brand busting open Boris Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal night after night in December. It has become a must-watch. They’re using big brands, such as the peerless, one-off Robert Peston, very well in the studio – no expert like the home-grown one. At 10pm on many nights, Tom Bradby is up front, very personal and magisterial in the anchor seat. He too is an appointment to view. That extra half-hour at 7pm gives them time to analyse as well as report. Life away from the 90-second package.
At 7pm, ITV News will be competing head-to-head with its ITN stablemate – a Jon Snow-less Channel Four News. That captain left that ship after 32 years in December. The show’s current form is patchy – very “Wokey/Guardianista”, social workers’ dreams, and frankly dull at times. With the editor Ben De Pear also leaving at the end of January, the new editor Esme Wren – Sky News, Newsnight and the defenestration of Prince Andrew on her CV – has an editorial revival task on her hands. The BBC network Six O’clock News is very solid – a strength and a weakness. Solid and stodgy. The shadows of Boris Johnson, Nadine Dorries and licence fee negotiations loom over their shoulders. BBC News is being pared to the bone, with big expensive names sent to retirement pastures, real-term licence-fee reductions and budget cuts.
The BBC regional news programmes are very variable. Mine, South Today, travels from Oxford to Southampton in half an hour and back in time for many stories. Cynics in my house call it History Today. It is almost as though they are blowing the audience advantage handed on a plate to them when ITV moved regional news from 6.30 to 6pm in 2008. Regional identities, such as Granadaland, were broken up, and the BBC cleaned up too in 2000 when News at Ten became News at When? The corporation took the historic name and the audience.
Education and information – two of Lord Reith’s famous triptych – came to the fore in the two years of the pandemic. People stuck at home, working or not. They wanted lights in the fog of confusion over health and wealth. TV news provided that, alongside the daily doom and gloom death toll figures. It scared, but scared for the public good. Sky News has been brilliant throughout in conveying current restrictions in all the nations and much more. In its guaranteed, 10-year funding cocoon, it is playing it straight down the line and proudly calling itself “the home of independent news” in a swipe at the “Fox lite” GB News.
Public info is the name of the game in public service broadcasting. None of the US streamers – Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ – provide any news programmes, just plenty of drama, football and documentaries. You simply cannot make a box set of Boris blunders that will sell to their audiences.
For now, it’s big-up time to Michael Jermey and his boss at ITV, Kevin Lygo. They had the courage to declare: “We are public broadcasters and we are here to serve the public.” Will the audience follow them? Time and BARB figures will tell. Meanwhile, don’t expect job ads for a Netflix correspondent in Moscow soon. News and daily packaged information is not their bag. Pity.
