ITN - History

History

ITN was founded in 1955 as part of the new British commercial television network, referred to as "Independent Television" (later ITV), by the Independent Television Authority. It began as a consortium of the initial ITV broadcasting companies, with former Labour MP Aidan Crawley as editor-in-chief. One of those companies, the London weekday contract-holder Associated-Rediffusion offered the new company studio space in its headquarters in Aldwych, London. The first ITN bulletin was presented by champion athlete Christopher Chataway. Geoffrey Cox joined as News Editor in 1956 after Crowley resigned, and he hired interviewers such as Robin Day. As ITV expanded, each ITV company that made up the network's federal structure had to purchase a stake in ITN and to continue to finance the company.

ITN has provided the main national news bulletins for ITV since 1955. 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 it now appears only in the end production caption. Even though national coverage is produced by ITN, it has no role in the regional coverage provided for each individual ITV region's newsroom with the exception of ITV London, which it has run since March 2004 following its acquisition of the London News Network, a company previously owned by the now merged Carlton and Granada. With the launch of Britain's second commercial station Channel 4 in 1982, ITN was given the job of providing Channel 4 News.

Until the 1990s, ITN had a guaranteed right and obligation to provide news for ITV and Channel 4. Since the Broadcasting Act 1990, ITN has had to apply and bid for a licence to provide such services on these networks and would have to fight competition in order to preserve its services, as had become the case with other ITV franchisees. In August 2000, the organisation launched its own 24-hour news channel in the UK, 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.

The biggest challenge came in 2001 when British Sky Broadcasting bid to supply network news to ITV as part of a consortium. ITN eventually succeeded and was awarded a contract extension to 2008. In January 2005 Sky News took over supplying bulletins to Channel 5; ITN had produced 5 News since its launch in 1997 and the contract was returned in February 2012, following a change of ownership at Channel 5. Also in 2005, ITN started producing The Queen's speech to the Commonwealth at Christmas once every two years, so that, for the first time since the inception of Independent Television in 1955, ITN produced a programme for its rival the BBC.

The ITV News Channel closed down on 23 December 2005. Poor ratings in comparison to BBC News 24 and Sky News, and ITV's desire to re-use the channel's allocation on Freeview, were cited as the reasons.

John Hardie is the Chief Executive Officer of ITN, a position he took up in June 2009. Prior to this, he was Executive VP and MD of Walt Disney Television EMEA.