ITC Tells ITV To Bring Forward Nightly News

The Independent Television Commission (ITC) has told ITV to move its Nightly News programme to an earlier slot after it “unanimously rejected” the network’s proposals to improve audience figures for its evening news output. The regulator told ITV it could not accept its suggestions for additional investment in the 9pm-11pm peaktime period unless it scheduled its 11pm news programme at an earlier time.

Slumping viewing figures for both national and regional news after the demise of News At Ten lead the ITC to step in and ask the network to make changes in order to improve its audiences. After the first set of proposals were rejected last month (see ITC Rejects ITV’s Proposals For Halting Audience Decline) the network was given until today to come up with another set.

Although today’s proposals promised to schedule better quality programmes in the run-up to its 11pm news programme, the ITC said it could not accept them unless ITV promised to move its news slot to an earlier time.

“This option could have proved good for viewers…[but] we were only prepared to do this on the basis that re-scheduling of the news would have been necessary in time if no improvement in news audiences occurred. In the circumstances we can only insist that Nightly News is moved to a time when it is more accessible to viewers,” said ITC chairman Robin Biggam.

He went on to say that ITV was aware of its public service obligation when the News at Ten was initially dropped. “At the time the changes to the schedule were agreed, ITV stated that they believed that the audience for news would hold or even increase and they agreed revised licence conditions which embodied this. In fact these audiences fell by 13.9% and there has been no evidence of improvement since the end of the period under review,” Biggam said.

The regulator said it is not its role to lay down precise scheduling requirements but believes that today’s decision is necessary to secure the delivery of suitably-scheduled news programmes. But ITV has returned fire by claiming that the regulator has no power to force it to change the times of its news slots.

ITC: 020 7306 7743 ITV: 020 7843 8000