Five News from ITN

They should basically re-arrange the daytime schedule a little and use the news as basically a lead into the film - basically would be, in the majority of the time 15 minutes long (with commercials and weather). then they should keep the 5pm 30 minute bulletin and then have a 30 minute bulletin at 11pm.

With reards to this new "debate" show, it would be better if it had a more general "current Affairs" scope in that some episodes could basically be the 5 News Specials, whilst other episodes could have 2 or 3 investigative reports and other episodes be a news discussion show - a true perfect name then could be "Tonday-Tonight" or "A Current Affair"

Fantasy schedule warning....

A typical weekday schedule could look like....

0930 The Wright Stuff
1130 Jeopardy!, Going For Gold, 100% (all UK series')
1200 Neighbours
1230 Home And Away
1300 Channel 5 News Update and Weather
f/b Film
1510 The Trisha Show
1600 Various British Series' (rpt)
1700 Channel 5 News; Weather
1730 Neighbours (rpt)
1800 Home and Away (rpt)
1830 A Current Affair/Today-Tonight

Then Headline Bulletins at 7pm, 8pm, 9pm and 10pm

11pm Channel 5 Late News; Weather

A 30min bulletin at 11pm would never work.

C5 News gets similar ratings to C4 (sometimes higher).

Sky News never even gets near what C5 News does in ratings- at 1700, Sky would never get more than 125000 on a good day. C5 News would get FIVE times this on a bad day.

Not sure why - if Channel 5 makes them money, as a commercial operation, why would they stop?

AIUI Channel 5 has to have a news service still - and someone has to get the contract to provide it.


Whilst the BBC and ITV News bulletins on BBC One/ITV get higher ratings than Channel 5 News, I don't know where you get the ideal that Sky and the BBC News Channel are beating it - I think that's quite wide of the mark. I think that Channel 5 and Channel 4 News are roughly comparable in ratings terms (i.e. quite low compared to BBC One/ITV News bulletins, but nothing like as low as the general ratings for news channels)


Though that was positioned at a point where it inherited an audience of 0 (as it was the first programme on the network), and at a time when digital TV was still not universal. Also - like ITV2/3/4 and BBC Four - BBC Three is still not quite in the same league as BBC One/Two, ITV, C4 and C5. C5 may be quite low rated in comparison to the other "terrestrials" but compared to "digital" channels - it rates quite a lot better, or did last time I looked.



How does that sit with their licence requirements?

Channel 5 news isn't going anywhere. It's fine how it is

Are you privy to internal discussions within Channel 5 then?

Yes and it's not as if the existence of Channel 5 News takes anything away from ITV and C4. If C5 news stopped it wouldn't free up any resources for the others - it would just be wound down and everyone made redundant

No I'm not

Then how can you make claims like the one, you've just made?

Well here's a thought... what would cost Channel 5 more money?

At presenter, mainly re-running the 5 at 6:30 or creating this new programme which will require additional staff (guest bookers) plus fees payable to those guests that appear.

That's the beauty of internet forums Jon. You can pretend to have inside knowledge, speculate about the imaginary, and obsess over 'What chair model is the current BBC News set-up using?'.

I'm *almost* certain that's why Tim Berners-Lee was included in the Olympic Opening Ceremony last year, because his wonderful invention, the web, keeps producing gifts such as 'coolalfieo' and 'bazinga' (among others)....

I don't pretend to have insider knowledge , I just stated my opinion. And it wasn't a claim either , And it's rather unfair to bring my name into something.