[itsrobert]

It's always been one of my favourite examples of ITN branding. Although the colour scheme dates it quite badly now, for the time it had quite a modern and futuristic design. I particularly like the lack of opening titles; instead it starts with the logo flying in across the images of the day's headlines. The theme music was good too - I'm a fan of those simple synthesised themes from the late 80s.

Of course, it evolved from the shortlived April 1988 rebranding of the News at 5.45. When the bulletin moved to 5.40pm in February 1989, the music was tweaked to remove the voice over and it got a better set with different camera angles rather than a straightforward CSO set-up.

Indeed, it evolved from the 5:45 upgrade, they changed the direction of the logo entry and for some reason dispensed with the 'spin/shrink' into the corner as well as the announcement, which was a shame.

Apologies if you already know this, but the 1988 voice overs were done by newscaster Phil Roman. Prior to that, DJ Simon Bates had done quite a few for the 5.45.

Voice overs seemed to go in and out of favour at ITN over the years. When News at One relaunched as the News at 12.30 in 1987 it retained voice overs (also by Phil Roman) but dropped them when it moved back to 1pm in 1988. The 5.45 lost them in early 1989, but the Weekend News, which had introduced them in 1987, strangely retained a brief voice over ("The news from ITN") until 1992. From 1992 onwards, the EEN and NAT had voice overs (now by Andrew Burt), but the Lunchtime and Weekend News didn't! It wasn't until 1995 that all bulletins had a voice over, before they were dropped again between 2004-2009. I can only assume that each bulletin had a different editor/director whose preference for or against voice overs won out!