ITN

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For other uses, see ITN (disambiguation).

ITN has corporate logos in five different colours, to represent each of the business units. This is the ITN News logo.

Image:ITN control room.jpg Image:ITN headquarters aerial.jpg Image:ITN satellite truck 2.jpg

ITN (Independent Television News) is a major news and content provider with headquarters in the United Kingdom. It is made up of 6 key businesses; ITN News, ITN Source, ITN On, ITN Factual, Visual Voodoo and ITN Consulting.

Today ITN produces content for ITV, Channel 4, More4, 300 commercial radio stations through Independent Radio News (IRN), all UK mobile phone operators, Google, MSN and countless film producers and researchers worldwide. ITN also produces a huge amount of programming for UK, US and European broadcasters through its programme making divisions.

As well as its London headquarters ITN has bureaux and offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Moscow, New York, Paris, Sydney and Washington, D.C.

[edit] History

ITN was founded in 1955 as part of the British commercial TV network ITV. It was formed as a consortium of the initial franchise holders, with former Labour MP Aidan Crawley as Editor-in-Chief. Associated-Rediffusion TV offered the new company studio space in their headquarters in Aldwych. The first ITN 'newscaster' to present their first broadcast was the champion athlete Christopher Chataway.

It has provided the main national news bulletins for the ITV network since that date. News was always branded as ITN until 1999 when the Carlton and Granada partnership which were important stakeholders renamed it simply as ITV News. From this point, the name ITN was gradually phased out, and now only appears in the production caption. The main ITV News bulletins are currently at 5.30am, 1.30pm, 6.30pm and 10.30pm with news summaries which vary throughout the morning, weekdays.

Even though national coverage is produced by ITN it has no role in the regional coverage provided for each individual region's newsroom, with the exception of the news for ITV1 London, which has been run by ITN since March 2004, coinciding with the Carlton and Granada merger.

When the two large ITV companies merged, regional identities were lost, leading to national and regional news programmes in the ITV plc regions having one consistent identity. But this also meant that regional individuality was gone in these areas, with all regional news programmes having the same music and titles to tie in with the national news.

With the expansion of TV channels in the United Kingdom in 1982, it commenced providing national bulletins for Channel 4. The Channel 4 News is shown at 7pm and a smaller bulletin News at Noon is also aired at 12pm. This lunchtime bulletin is also simulcast on S4C analogue in Wales. Channel 4 launched digital channel More4 in 2005 and ITN has also supplied the More4 News programme after the Channel 4 News finishes at 8pm.

In August 2000, the organisation launched its own 24 hour news channel in the UK, which was broadcast on satellite, cable and digital terrestrial. It was 50% owned by ITN and 50% owned by NTL. Carlton and Granada gradually bought out the two stakes and renamed the channel the ITV News Channel. Due to poor ratings in comparison to BBC News 24 and Sky News, and ITV's desire to re-use the channel's allocation on Freeview, the ITV News Channel closed down at 6pm on 23 December 2005.

ITN's "stranglehold" of the UK terrestrial commercial channel news output was eroded somewhat from January 2005 when Sky News begun to supply news bulletins to Five. ITN had provided news services to Five since its launch in 1997, when it was known as Channel 5. Sky also bid to supply network news to ITV as part of a consortium, but failed when in 2001 ITN was awarded a contract extension to 2008.

In June 2006, ITN underwent a repositioning and rebranded in order to reflect changes to the range of services that ITN provides. ITN is now split into five key businesses, ITN News, ITN Source (formerly ITN Archive), ITN On (formerly ITN Multimedia and Radio), ITN Consulting, and production houses ITN Factual and Visual Voodoo. Each of these businesses has its own logo and colour.

[edit] Operations

[edit] ITN News

ITN's first bulletin aired on 22nd February 1955, the day commercial television was born in the UK.

ITN began its own World News bulletins in the late 1980s, which were shown around the world on local television channels, particularly on PBS stations in the US, where presenter Daljit Dhaliwal (now with the BBC) enjoyed cult status. These were discontinued in 2001, in the face of competition from dedicated news channels such as BBC World, although it still provides footage to CNN International, and reports often appear on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Its ITV Evening News bulletin was shown on the Newsworld International cable channel in the US.

In the 1990s, under new ownership, it was accused of abandoning its previous news style, which was broadsheet in style, to mid-market tabloid, with news stories that focused on personalities in the news rather than heavy news coverage. The change in style matched changes in the nature of news coverage on the ITV Network, which saw the axing of the long-running and award winning World in Action current affairs and investigative journalism news programme in 1998. ITN's most famous news programme, News at Ten was also controversially replaced by an 11pm news bulletin in 1999, in order to allow ITV to broadcast films without the interruption of a 10 o'clock news bulletin. News at Ten was subsequently re-instated in 2001 after heavy public criticism over the change. The restored News at Ten, was, however, ten minutes shorter than its predecessor and carried less in-depth news coverage. It also was broadcast at a later time at least one day a week, which meant it was often referred to as News at When?. Since March 1999, the name ITN and its logo no longer features in the opening credits of the organisation's bulletins, with the term ITV News assuming prominence instead. The ITN name is now only seen at the end of bulletins.

There was increasing speculation that News at Ten will once again be moved permanently, after under-performing against the Ten O'Clock News on BBC One which is broadcast every weekday and on Sundays at 10:00pm. In October 2003, the Independent Television Commission gave ITV approval to move News at Ten to a 10:30pm slot.

The new ITV News at 10.30 launched on 2 February 2004 (the day that ITV in England and Wales came under the ownership of a single company) and was presented by Sir Trevor McDonald. The programme is longer than its predecessor and carries an integrated regional bulletin. ITV News editors say that they are aiming at a more upmarket audience and the new programme carries a nightly sports roundup, more business stories and a preview of the next day's newspapers. In a large rebranding of ITV and its channels, the news at 10:30 was rebranded on 16 January 2006 as the Nightly News (though the name is not used on-screen) and is presented by Mark Austin (following Sir Trevor McDonald's departure on 15 December 2005). The rebranded programme again saw new titles, this time featuring people walking over the face of Big Ben, and has lately followed a more "sensationalist" approach to its main headlines.

Similarly, ITN's 24-hour news channel (launched some distance behind the wake of Sky News and BBC News 24) was jointly bought by the main ITV companies Carlton and Granada, and subsequently renamed and re-branded as the ITV News Channel. This had a key economic advantage: the news channel shared ITV1's news studio and broadcast simultaneously the main ITV1 news programmes until its closure in December 2005.

In March 2004 ITN took over production of ITV London's regional news programmes, which relocated from their previous South Bank studios to ITN's Gray's Inn Road base.

ITN operates a radio news service on behalf of IRN Independent Radio News, and between 1996 and 2002 owned a share of London News Radio, which was based at ITN's Gray's Inn Road HQ and operated the LBC and News Direct London radio stations.

[edit] ITN Source

ITN Source, formerly ITN Archive, is the world's fastest growing provider of moving image content. ITN Source holds footage of defining moments in world history from as far back as 1896. As well as its own archive, ITN Source represents several other libraries including ITN Source administers the world's largest collection of moving image libraries, including the Reuters television archive, the Channel 4 archive, most of the Granada library (including such well known programmes as Coronation Street, World In Action, Survival and the British version of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!), the Fox News Channel and Fox Movietone archive and the British Pathe news archive.

[edit] ITN On

ITN On, formerly known as ITN Multimedia, came into being in 2003, providing the first video news bulletin for third generation(3G) mobile for operator 3. It has since expanded its video news service to Vodafone Live! O2, MobiTv, Rok TV and Orange. ITN On also offers a range of news and entertainment content to broadband operators including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Blinkx.

ITN On was the first UK news supplier to create the first made-for-mobile 24 hour news channel launching it on MobiTV on Orange which was quickly followed by a made-for-mobile weather channel.

ITN On's mobile and broadband division's averages 6m downloads a month. Since 2003, the department has grown from 3 staff to 40.

ITN On's radio division IRN supplies news to 300 commercial radio stations throughout the UK with a daily audience of 26 million. ITN On's radio division is currently producing the Morning Report podcast for Channel 4 Radio in association with Channel 4 News.

[edit] ITN Factual

ITN Factual has created hundreds of hours of critically acclaimed, award-winning programmes for major international broadcasters including all the UK's main broadcasters as well as The Discovery Channel, A&E TV Networks, PBS, and The National Geographic Channel in the US. Recent successes include 'Diapatches-The Data Theft Scandal' on Channel 4 and 'The First Head Transplant' on Five.

[edit] Visual Voodoo

Visual Voodoo make factual entertainment programmes for ITV, Channel 4, Five and the multi-channel world. Recent programmes include Help Your Self an eight part series presented by Angus Deayton on ITV1, and Little Britain: A Showbiz Marriage on Five.

[edit] Ownership

From its inception in 1955, ITN was originally owned jointly by all the ITV operating companies, the shares split roughly in proportion to each company's advertising income. However (largely at the behind-the-scenes instigation of ITN's then management) the 1990 Broadcasting Act limited the ITV companies to a maximum joint 49% stake, with no single company allowed more than a 20% holding. These requirements were abolished by the Communications Act 2003.

ITN is currently owned by ITV plc (40%), Reuters (20%), Daily Mail & General Trust (20%) and United Business Media plc (20%).

ITV's ownership of 40% of ITN (at that time equally split between Carlton and Granada) made the 2001 bid from Sky for ITV bulletins unlikely to succeed, the network having a vested interest to see ITN continue. But it did lead to a reduction in the value of the ITV News contract from £46million per annum to £35million, at a time the ITV companies had originally budgeted they might have to pay £70 million.

The current ITN contract for ITV1 News expires at the end of 2008. Charles Allen, then chief executive of ITV plc, indicated in January 2005 that he would try to use this as a lever to gain 100% ownership of ITN at the best possible price – a final step in the aggressive consolidation of ITV since 1990. But it remains to be seen whether the other shareholders will allow this.<ref> Stewart Purvis. "And finally? Not quite yet", British Journalism Review, June, 2004.</ref><ref> David Rowan. "Interview with David Mannion", Evening Standard, 26 January, 2005.</ref>.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• ITN.co.uk
• itv.com - News
• Channel4.com - News
• IndependentRadioNews.co.uk
• ITNSource.com

Category: ITV