News Views
After just one week, the evidence shows that ITN’s revived News at Ten is not doing nearly so well as hoped. BBC’s Ten O’Clock News is still in the lead as far as the ratings are concerned and Huw Edwards is winning the war of the silver foxes in a straight shoot-out with Sir Trevor McDonald.
Resurrecting News at Ten, complete with Big Ben’s Bongs, has been a missed opportunity for ITN. The ludicrous wars over the lauded news slot some six years ago were demeaning enough but why do producers at ITN imagine that, as a nation, we regard the style and history of news reporting with some sort of misty-eyed nostalgia akin to reminiscing over the TV we watched as children?
The news is not The Clangers, Magic Roundabout or Dangermouse. Even Blue Peter has managed to constantly re-invent itself (complete with phone-in scams.) Did ITN’s bosses really imagine that a few loud bongs, the same urgent music and the sight of Sir Trevor were enough to make us rush back to ITV.
Over the top graphics (worthy of the brilliant spoof ‘The Day Today’ ) do not necessarily create a really modern approach to reporting. But, without entering into a diatribe along with Salieri about the BBC’s funding and politics, it does seem that the beeb has kept rather more ahead of the times even if it has ripped off the original Channel 5 ‘stand up and walk around the studio’ approach pioneered by Kirsty Young.
Sir Trevor is being cagey about how long he is likely to stay in the driving seat at News at Ten. He’s no spring chicken but he does seem to have the ‘national treasure’ factor that we Brits usually reserve for Richard Attenborough or Ronnie Corbett. Perhaps it’s understandable that there was little confidence in overhauling the programme without having him there.
But the news shouldn’t be like this. I don’t have an issue with Sir Trevor but he did actually announce that he had read his last News at Ten bulletin over two years ago and now he’s back. With this record, are we supposed to believe anything he says?
We live in an age of 24/7 news where allowances made for celebrity, sentiment and show-stopping theme tunes shouldn’t have a place. We expect something more interesting from ITN and News at Ten. And that’s definitely not news.