News at 10.30
- 18 Jan 08, 12:21 PM
You couldn't open a newspaper this week without bumping into of the battle of the Newses at Ten. On the bulletins themselves, ITN and the أغر؟´«أ½ battled to outdo each other with a series of exclusives - it was great fun to watch.
I think most of us who work in TV news welcome the return of News at Ten, mainly because it brings back the frisson of head to head competition which should keep both products on their toes.
On Newsnight, we're especially delighted to welcome back Sir Trevor and co. as we're now the only news programme at 10.30. In truth there hasn't been a huge overlap between our audiences or competition between our programmes - we tend to look to Channel 4 at 7pm for that. But while others have focused on the at 10 we've noticed a small but significant rise in our audience now we have the slot to ourselves.
And there was one totally unexpected windfall. On Tuesday, ITN sent us the press release of their exclusive interview with the prime minister in which he called the work and pensions secretary Peter Hain incompetent. We asked them for the clip and they provided it - so we were baffled when the quote didn't appear on News at Ten.
For that you had to tune in to Newsnight, at 10.30.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
