News at Ten: ITV waves the white flag

ITV just can’t help itself, writes Raymond Snoddy – entertainment always takes priority over serious peak-time news programmes

ITV’s announcement that it is launching a new weeknight entertainment show at 10pm in the New year is highly entertaining, even before we have had a chance to see whether The Nightly Show will be remotely amusing.

Instantly we tap into a commercial television saga that has already run for decades and revolves around a single question. Is ITV a serious news provider, which wants to reach the largest possible audience at 10pm, or is this reputational ambition always subject to review if entertainment looks as if it can pull in more viewers and advertising revenue.

The main evening ITV news bulletin has been at 11pm for 20 minutes with a one-minute summary at 10pm, at 10.30pm and then at 10pm again but only three nights a week.

The News At When tag was thoroughly deserved and there have also been ham-fisted attempts to muck about with the format. The Big Ben idents were dropped as being too metropolitan and then reinstated.

Ironically the attempt to chase ratings with the 11pm shift actually resulted in a 13.9 per cent fall in overall viewing.

The madness seemed to come to an end in October 2007 when Michael Grade announced the return of News at Ten accepting what has happened to the programme in previous years had been “a shocking mistake” that had damaged ITV more than anything else.

The trouble is that it is not so easy to put this particular genie back in the bottle.

The programme’s meanderings had unsurprisingly damaged audiences and allowed Greg Dyke’s BBC to shift the Nine O’Clock News to 10 – a slot that it has dominated effectively ever since.

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The Grade approach seemed to be become more permanently entrenched with clear evidence that ITV was taking news and current affairs more seriously. Serious money was spent on the re-launch of News at Ten in October 2015 with Tom Bradby with the hiring of Robert Preston as political editor.

The approach was fresh and innovative, conversational but with an extra dash of analysis.

There was another burst of entertainment with what was dubbed the Battle of the Bongs but ultimately the dial scarcely shifted and the BBC retained its overall lead.

Which is presumably why we are now going to be able to enjoy The Nightly Show at 10pm for an eight-week season.

ITV is in effect running up the white flag on News At Ten. It has made its best effort but the Beeb holds the ground it won by broadcasting at 10pm consistently six nights a week, year after year.

Naturally ITV says it has “no plans” to run The Nightly Show on a permanent basis. You should only believe that will be the case if the not-so-late chat show is a failure.

If David Walliams and the other seven so far unannounced weekly presenters are a success, you can be sure it will be wall-to wall Nightly shows at 10pm and News At Ten will be no more.

So what can you deduce from the announcement put out late last week about the new show?

Despite all the history ITV simply cannot help itself. Deep down entertainment takes priority over a serious peak-time news programme.

News at Ten Thirty for the sake of regulation just about qualifies as peak but the consequences – at least for eight weeks – are very predictable.

Many viewers are creatures of habit and by 10.30pm on weekdays at least part of the audience are starting to prepare for bed. This is even more true of ITV’s local news which will now start at 11pm.

You can absolutely guarantee that News at Ten Thirty will lose audience as a result of its later start. If it was not so you could run The Nightly Show at 10.45pm.

The manoeuvre will mercifully end forever arguments from presenters such as Tom Bradby and politicians such as John Whittingdale suggesting that the BBC should be forced to move the 10 O’Clock News to give a free run to ITV. Not when the ITV News is all over the place.

You can also predict that the BBC will gain audience share from those who want to watch a news bulletin at 10pm before going to bed.

It is equally likely that eight weeks will, for some, be enough time to create a new viewing habit and that News at Ten when it returns will be starting again from a new lower base.

It is also possible that Walliams could attract some BBC viewers lading to an overall decline in the numbers watching either version of the news but that is unlikely.

Realists will say all of this is irrelevant because of pause, record, catch-up, Twitter, Sky News, mobile and the many other options to view news that are available round the clock.

True, but many still engage in television viewing battles by the old traditional rules of the game.

The other question is whether The Nightly Show, probably inspired by the unexpected success of James Corden’s The Late Late Show on CBS, will actually work.

It’s absolutely clear that any time anyone has tried to import American late evening shows with monologues, music and celeb interviews to the UK they have flunked. Not even Johnny Carson could hack it in the UK.

Will a British version with British presenters, themes, topics and humour – as opposed to humor – make it?

It is certainly possible but not inevitable.

ITV is also taking a bit of a risk on revolving presenters.

The hope is to find the one that stands out with the audience and sign him or her up for the permanent version for which it has “no plans”. The danger is that eight different presenters will fragment the effort and leave no fixed impression in the minds of viewers.

The symbolism is, however, unmistakable. ITV cares more about getting a modest uplift from entertainment at 10pm than protecting the continuity of News At Ten – something it seemed passionately committed to just over a year ago.

ITV is perfectly entitled to make this choice and even make it permanent – but it doesn’t look like its finest hour.