BBC director general Tony Hall ruled out a move of BBC1’s main evening news bulletin after culture secretary John Whittingdale questioned whether it should be broadcast at the same time as ITV’s News at Ten.
Lord Hall said BBC1’s 10pm news bulletin, where it was moved from an hour earlier in 2000, had opened up the schedules to allow the channel to broadcast a range of bold dramas at 9pm.
He said it had switched at a time when ITV had moved its own bulletin away from 10pm, prompting the long-running “news at when” saga as it was moved around the schedules.
By coincidence, Whittingdale made his comments on the night when ITV once again moved the News at Ten to make way for Uefa Champions League highlights.
Hall said: “The most important voice here is the audience, the audiences at 10 o’clock for news are really, really strong and it works. I don’t see why you therefore want to play around with that.”
“It has allowed drama on BBC1 to be bolder and run dramas it couldn’t otherwise have done, that was a major, major change and also remember at that point ITV had decided that News at Ten should sometimes be at 10pm and sometimes at 10.30pm, more at 10.30pm I think,” Hall told the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge on Thursday.
“We were not saying let’s go head to head with News at Ten, we were moving into what was a semi-vacant plot, that’s really important.”
The BBC’s evening news typically has an audience of about 5 million viewers, ahead of roughly 2 million viewers for ITV’s.
His comments came a day after Whittingdale, announcing a review of the market impact of the BBC on its commercial rivals, said: “It is important to look at the impact the BBC has on commercial rivals.
“To give one example, is it sensible that its main evening news bulletin goes out at the same time as ITV’s?”
Hall said Whittingdale was absolutely right to talk about the need for BBC1 to be distinctive.
“It’s really important for us to demonstrate that we are distinctive,” said the director general. “We have to keep asking ourselves are we doing the things we should be doing, the originality, the boldness, the creativity.”
