[Andrew]

I suspect ITN have thought (and are thinking of) lots of different ways (and dare I say gimmicks?) to keep viewers engaged in that second half, and I expect we've not seen some of these yet. (Just as long as they don't bring back The Pulse! ) One thing I am surprised they haven't tried is a sport bulletin - I can only imagine this is because ITV don't have a massive amount of sport rights anymore. A lot of hour-long bulletins on channels in other countries tend to dedicate a good chunk of their hour to sport news.

The absence of a sport news bulletin from any of the main broadcasters has always felt to me a bit of a missed opportunity (though you did briefly get Saturday Sportsday on BBC One). You don't actually need any sports rights to show short highlights reels (after a brief time limit) and there are clearly a lot of people interested in sport news. The BBC could easily put out a daily edition of Sportsday on BBC One or Two, or even just have left Sportsday on BBC One HD instead of the holding slide. Would certainly get better figures than consigning it to the News channel.

It’s funny that the only place you get an extended sports bulletin on the main channels is on BBC Breakfast (and to some degree at weekends on BBC network bulletins)

They could easily flesh out more sport in the extended evening news, if they wanted to