ITN's Wood confident about 'News at Ten'

ITN chief executive Mark Wood has said he is confident about next year's return of News at Ten.

He said that the return of the show and its new Setanta Sports News service spelt a bright 2008 for his company.

The late evening news will return to the traditional slot in 2008 along with former host Trevor McDonald.

Wood said he was glad about the move although it does not mean higher income for ITN: "I’m very excited. It’s a bigger audience and a chance to compete head-on with the BBC. We have a confident team producing a very pacy show."

He added he was not too concerned about imminent cuts to ITV regional news which supplies some coverage to ITN.

"Our chief concern is that there are cameras out there on the ground gathering news," he explained. "So far, we don’t see any reason why it would have a serious impact.

"From ITV’s point of view, employing a lot of people to produce 17 regional news programmes doesn’t sound as if it is commercially tenable or durable. It begs for rationalisation."

Wood also spoke about the company's work on its biggest project for seven years, the Setanta 24-hour sports channel, which will launch on Thursday.

He said it would be "young and fairly chatty", focused on Premiership football and with lots of golf, tennis and racing.

"We think our visuals are better than Sky’s," commented Wood. "We are looking for more exciting presentation and we want more reporting."