ITV moves to restore News at Ten

ITV is to re-establish News at Ten as its main evening news bulletin next year.

The Guardian reports that Sir Trevor McDonald has agreed to return as the programme's presenter alongside Julie Etchingham from Sky News.

The flagship programme aired on ITV from July 1967 to March 1999, when it was pushed to 11pm and rebranded the ITV Nightly News in order to permit longer dramas and films to broadcast uninterrupted. When audience figures fell, the Independent Television Commission - now subsumed into Ofcom - ordered ITV to move it to an earlier slot. ITV objected to the order and was granted a judicial review; between 2001 and 2003, ITV aired a 20 minute news bulletin at 10pm Mondays to Thursdays, but the absence of a regular start time on Fridays caused it to be dubbed the "News at When" by critics. In October 2003, the ITC agreed to an ITV request that it be allowed to move the programme to a permanent 10:30pm slot and it has run there since February 2004.

> Click here for a full history of News At Ten

Rumours that ITV would adjust its evening schedule - and thus its 9pm commissions - in order to permit the re-establishment of a news bulletin at 10pm began earlier this year when he said that moving the bulletin "to the outer reaches of the schedule was a catastrophe" and that he planned to restore flagship mid-week dramas to 9pm.