ITN Nostalgia

[JK1985]

These videos are like buses - you wait years and two come along at once. Another full edition from a year earlier - June 1988. This is the same structure - ITN and CNN World News encased in Morning News, but the ITN World News presentation is still the original 1987 version with John Suchet (speaking very slowly for the foreign audience!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzuCJO781bs

Looking at these videos, there was very little live content really. Most of the ITN reports were probably repackaged from the day before, the headlines are recapped a few times and huge chunks are taken up with the two taped editions of World News. It basically remained virtually unchanged until it was axed in the relatively recent past, save for the reduction to 30 minutes by axing the World News segments.

Although they look rather primitive, my guess is this was quite pioneering really. Am I right in saying this was the first real attempt at overnight news in the UK? I don't think the BBC did it until News 24 launched about a decade later and Sky News didn't start up until a year after ITN were in full swing with their "Into the Night" bulletins.

ITV were the first television channel in the UK to go full 24 hours by 1988, region by region went 24 hours, with Ulster Television being the last in October 1988.

ITN provided two short news summaries during the night - I was told that these news summaries were usually not aired live in most regions. Instead ITN provided the summaries at 1.00am and 3.00am, and it was up to each region to chose where to place them. As overnight programming on ITV back then was not a networked thing - region by region had different night time programme strands.

This was the reason why the overnight news summaries never had a "Good Morning" welcome at the start, and always ended with "I will have more news later" - never stating a time, as the next bulletin would vary depending on each region.

BBC overnight news on BBC One and BBC Two was non existent - except only in extreme cases such as the Gulf War of 1991 or the death of Princess Diana. BBC One close down routine usually had the announcer informing viewers that BBC Radio 2 was on the air through the night, with news bulletins on the hour.

BBC News 24 launched in 1997, and with it came the first overnight news service on BBC One.