ITN special: 60 years on air

For 60 years, ITV News has been Britain’s most watched and most trusted commercial news service. From the Moon landings to the 9/11 terror attacks, from the death of Diana to the Asian tsunami, we have produced distinctive and compelling coverage of the events that shaped our history.

Our storytelling heritage was built long before rolling news, the internet or social media existed, and for millions of people, our pictures and programmes offered a unique window onto world events. For many, it was their primary or only source of news.

We continue to produce award-winning journalism on television and online, but the way media is consumed in the modern world – with the rise of the smartphone, in particular – puts more pressure than ever before on TV news programmes to stand out in a crowded market.

We need to build on our heritage of bold, eyewitness reporting with the analysis of our top correspondents and specialist editors, and the expertise and personality of our anchors, as we seek to offer our viewers the most distinctive coverage and most thoughtful take on the day’s main stories.

ITV News continues to innovate and later this year we’re moving to a single-anchored News At Ten with Tom Bradby and Julie Etchingham as our regular presenters. We’re building on our recent success to further enhance the reputation and trust in our brand, and to ensure the next 60 years are just as successful.

THE BIRTH OF CHANNEL 4 NEWS
Benjamin de Pear, editor

As a viewer, I’d watch other news programmes, but only by tuning in to Channel 4 News would I finally understand the story, because you hear the voice of the voiceless.

As an editor, it’s always been a case of: ‘What does the programme care about?’ It’s less of a bulletin, more: ‘This has happened, we want you to understand and care.’ News is the most natural drama – it’s the best and most important drama on TV.

It’s heartening that we’re bucking the trend by growing our audience for the first time in more than five years – by 1% in volume and 5% in share. When momentous events are taking place, from Isis to Charlie Hebdo, Jeremy Corbyn’s victory and the refugee crisis, people are turning to us because they trust us.

We’ve also employed several new digital-native journalists who know exactly how to package our journalism for social media. In January, we had 5 million Facebook video views a month; now it’s 4.5 million a day.

The constant in C4 News is Jon Snow. He’s a journalist first and foremost, and comes to our early morning meetings with a million ideas – and he will travel to cover international events. That’s true of all our presenters – they don’t just turn up and read the autocue, but submerge themselves in the story so that by the time we go on air, they’ve absorbed every part of it.

Not only do we hold the powerful to account, but journalism too. Our best journalists are slightly OCD and obsessional.

HOW CHANNEL 5 NEWS BLAZED A TRAIL
Cristina Nicolotti-Squires, editor

Channel 5 News burst onto our screens with Kirsty Young famously, even scanda lously, perched on her disk rather than sitting behind it. We blazed a trail. Look at the BBC and Sky now – their presenters often get out from their behind desks.

Over the past 18 years, we’ve opened up news for an audience that wouldn’t naturally watch it. But we’ve matured a little now and work hard to hold our own against the big broadcasters. Our Q&A with David Cameron in the election campaign was a watershed – we’ve reached a point where the political establishment look at us and see credibility.

We’re not afraid to do things differently. We’ve carried investigative reports into legal highs and dementia, and last December we broadcast live from NHS hospitals for a week. These are issues we feel are important, rather than following the traditional news agenda.

Yes, our audience primarily look to us for domestic news, but we run many international stories when we can make them accessible.

As the first terrestrial teatime programme of the day, we deserve to have attention paid to us. The 5pm show has a more female, Northern audience, while the 6.30pm show, up against ITV News and the BBC’s regional news, skews younger and slightly more male. The C5 News viewer is an important consumer and a part of the electorate. We must never lose sight of that.

THE FORMATION OF ITN PRODUCTIONS
Mark Browning, managing director

Forming ITN Productions was about pulling together several of the major ventures we had at the time: digital, facilities, our corporate conference TV business and our factual arm. It was to be an indie owned by ITN, capable of making long-form TV, particularly current affairs.

First out of the blocks was Mud Men for History, plus BBC1 daytime series Climbing Great Buildings. By 2011, we had pushed into fast-turnaround documentaries.

Today, a large proportion of what we make is outside of ITN’s core news remit – it’s in factual, sport, commercials and branded content. The link is the quality stamp of the ITN brand, the reputation for storytelling and fair, responsive analysis.

ITN works with journalists across the board so why not use them to pitch for Dispatches, The Agenda and Channel 5 debate shows?

Our revenues rose by 44% year-onyear last year to £16.7m on the back of 36 broadcast commissions.

The journey has been about building on our position, looking beyond current affairs and topical factual. So we’re building up our portfolio of factual series and we see opportunities in daytime, international and popular factual. Our recent appointment of I’m a Celebrity co-creator and former RDF director of programmes Will Smith as factual chief will support this.

We want shows that are built in the UK and highly exportable. We’ve got huge ambition in this space.

ITN SOURCE GOES DIGITAL
Andy Williams, managing director

Until ITN Source’s archive was completely digitised in 2012, clip licensing was a very different beast. Someone would find a record on a database and send out a DVD to the client; if they found a clip within it they liked, we’d then send them the bit they wanted.

People still think of archives as dusty cans buried in the basement. To compete with rivals, we needed to streamline things – both to make it user-friendly and to preserve it. Older material on tape and film was starting to degrade and we risked losing it.

It was a bold investment – we were the first fully digital news archive in the world. And this was in the depths of the recession in 2009. But the preservation argument swung it – the machines used to process old tapes were ready to be put into museums.

Above all, of course, it was a commercial opportunity – we could offer hours of World In Action, The South Bank Show, dramas, chat shows and all ITV Studios output, all from a single place. We immediately saw a huge upswing in licences.

Now we’re digitalising Reuters’ archive too and moving into the education space with this year’s launch of ITVedu.com, after discovering there was a demand for authentic news footage from clients like Pearson and McGraw-Hill. ITN’s archive can help to illustrate history, geography, business, politics, culture, economics and science. So we’re trawling through the archive to find clips with educational value and adding educationrelevant metadata.

Video is what people are interested in and we’re sitting on a huge digital resource. Everything in news today is online tomorrow.