Comparative Journalism

ITV
ITV (Independent Television) was launched in 1955. This was before BBC2 (1964) ITV is a wholly commercial company and receives most its revenues from advertising. It has a licence to broadcast from the British government. Amongst the conditions of this licence is that it must broadcast a certain amount of news programmes every day. There are also rules for documentary production, independent production and regional production.

ITN News
In 1955 ITN news also started as news service for ITV. It remains the second largest broadcast news organisation in the UK. It is based in London but has international offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Sydney and Washington DC.

ITN News on ITV

On ITV there are 30-minute ITN national news broadcasts at 1.30pm; 5.30pm and 10.00pm These are followed by 30 minute regional news broadcasts (10 minutes after 10.30pm)

ITN News
Despite being a commercial broadcaster ITN had a very good reputation in Britain for producing high-quality news broadcasts. The news broadcasts used to be in a broadsheet style. Many of the ITN news readers would be famous for being very tough interviewers.

ITN News

ITN also employed Britains first black newsreader, Trevor McDonald

ITV and ITN News

In 1982, another new terrestrial channel, Channel 4 began broadcasting in Britain. ITN News also produced the news programs for this channel. Until 1990, by law ITN was the news provider for ITV and Channel 4. Since this time other news providers (but not the BBC) have had the option to apply to be news provider for this channels. Although Sky News (Murdoch) has shown interest, ITV and Channel 4 have renewed their contracts with ITN.

ITN News
From the 1950s to 1980s ITN was well respected for its news coverage. ITV also broadcast many high-quality documentaries and current affairs programmes such as World In Action. In the 1990s, it has been criticised for reducing the quality of news broadcasts (dumbing down) There is now more celebrity news and also few interviews.

News at When?
During the 2000s ITV was criticised for moving the time of its most watched news programme the News at Ten to different times. ITV did not like having a news broadcast at 10pm. It wanted to show films from 9pm without a break for news. It changed the time to 11pm. Many members of the public complained because 11pm was too late. ITV chose to change the time of the news back to 10pm but to make it 10 minutes shorter.