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British Commercial News Broadcasting

Since 1955 British commercial broadcast journalism services have provided an alternative to and competition for the publicly funded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). For 40 years, that competition resulted in high levels of investment in broadcast journalism, both news and current affairs, and high standards of editorial and production quality together with a commitment, in the main, to a quality editorial agenda. Journalism on commercial networks was supported by a regulatory regime that rewarded investment in high quality news and current affairs and insisted on impartiality and accuracy as the key journalistic values. For most of the period, commercial broadcast journalism enjoyed a reputation for enterprising and investigative reporting and was seen to match the BBC for quality. At the end of the twentieth century, however, growing competition for audiences and the progressive deregulation of British television led to a decline in the significance of broadcast journalism in commercial television. By the early twenty-first century, one of the major issues as Britain switched to digital television was how much of that journalist heritage would survive.

Network News on ITV

When commercial television was launched in the UK in 1955 it was as a network of regional companies. None of them had the resources or expertise to produce national and international news. Despite that, the then regulator, the Independent Television Authority (ITA), insisted that the Independent Television (ITV) companies provide high quality national and international news as part of their licence obligations. With the regulator's encouragement, they set up a separate company, Independent Television News (ITN), to provide the network news service. It soon established itself as an enterprising and innovative operation. Geoffrey Cox, ITN's editor from 1956 to 1968, was one of the creators of modern television news in the UK. Where the BBC had used presenters to read the news, he hired experienced journalists to write as well as read news stories. ITN soon also employed the first woman newscaster (Barbara Mandell) in British television.

Cox introduced interviews into news programs, making headlines with a controversial interview by his star interviewer, Robin Day (later the BBC's main current affairs interviewer), with President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in 1957, a few months after British forces had temporarily seized the Suez Canal. ITN's news coverage was equally enterprising and daring. When the Soviet Union crushed an uprising in Hungary in 1956, ITN's cameraman shot the classic pictures of the column of Soviet T34 tanks heading for Budapest. During the 1960s, ITN developed the technique of the “reporter package”—cutting pictures to match the correspondent's commen-tary—which had been pioneered by CBS and other American broadcasters. Cox was determined that television news should be accurate and impartial and have the same high ethical standards as the BBC. He helped ensure that the culture of impartiality was deeply embedded in British broadcast journalism.

News at Ten

Cox's most important innovation came at the end of his editorship. In 1967 he persuaded the regulator and the skeptical ITV companies to experiment with a 30-minute news program in prime time—at 10 p.m. on weeknights. The broadcast was called News at Ten and it immediately established itself as one of the most important programs on the network, with audiences regularly in the top 20 or even top ten ITV programs of the week. In 1968 it was the most popular show on British television on three occasions and for 30 years it remained a fixed point in the ITV schedule. Its newscasters from Alastair Burnet to Trevor McDonald—the first black journalist to be a British television network's principal newscaster—became household names. Its style of presentation owed something to American network news at the time with a combination of serious, frontline reporting and stories with a popular touch—the program often ending with a lighter, human interest item introduced with the words “and finally….”

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