[Ben Shatliff]

So let us look at the complete pigs breakfast mess ITV made with them axing News at Ten in 1999

In March 1999, ITV move their News at Ten to a new 6.30pm slot and call it the Evening News, and then take their 20 minute early evening news digest at 5.40pm, and move that to 11pm and call it the Nightly News - and then the ratings implode (over dramatic yes, but the ratings weren't good)

In January 2001, after months of discussion between ITV and the ITC (including the ITC bribing ITV by offering more advert time in prime time, they came up with "News at Ten Returns" - which was a complete lie - ITV would simply take their ITV Nightly News at 11pm, move it back to 10pm and rename it ITV News at Ten - kept at the Nightly News duration of 20 minutes - regional news was cast adrift to 11.20pm for a few months, before the bright spark at ITV felt it would be better placed at 10.20pm.

And to make matters even worse the new "diet" ITV News at Ten would only air three nights a week, with Friday nights edition kept at 11pm and named ITV Weekend News, and on one night during the week, ITV could move the News at Ten to fit in with movies or sport - leading to the usually funny but stupid ITV News at Ten at 10.45pm. I remember on some occasions in 2002 ITV News at Ten was placed at 11pm which was so stupid, they should have just used the name ITV News genric branding for that slot.

2004 - ITV knew they were in an even bigger mess than in 1999, so move their late news to 10.30pm five nights a week, with ratings already in the toilet for their late news, they just gave up and kept it at 10.30pm.

2008 - one decent thing Michael Grade did do at ITV was to reinstate News at Ten properly and from January 2008 it was back (Fridays was still at 11pm for a short while).

What a complete balls up they had over a period of 8 years

And sadly even to this day; the ratings have never returned.

What wasn’t broken didn’t need fixing.

They should have left News At Ten at 22:00 and moved the Early Evening News to 18:30 in a 30 now 60 minute slot which I think has worked.