Television presenter
A presenter is a person who introduces or hosts television programs. Nowadays, it is common for personalities in other fields to take on this role, but some people have made their name within the field of presenting within children's television series, to become television personalities; some presenters may double as an actor, singer, etc. Others may be subject matter experts, such as scientists or politicians, serving as presenters for a programme about their field of expertise; some are celebrities who have made their name in one area leverage their fame to get involved in other areas. Examples of this latter group include British comedian Michael Palin who now presents programmes about travel, American actor Alan Alda, who presented Scientific American Frontiers for over a decade. Another example would be American stand-up comedian Joe Rogan, a commentator and post-fight interviewer in UFC; the term is used in other countries including Ireland and Sri Lanka. In the US, such a person is called a host, such as in the terminology talk show host, or an MC.
In the context of TV news programs, they are known as anchors. News presenter Radio personality Horror host Sports commentator
Surrey
Surrey is a subdivision of the English region of South East England in the United Kingdom. A historic and ceremonial county, Surrey is one of the home counties; the county borders Kent to the east, East Sussex and West Sussex to the south, Hampshire to the west, Berkshire to the northwest, Greater London to the northeast. Inhabited by about 1.2 million people, Surrey is the twelfth most populous English county, both the third most populous home county and the third most populous county in the South East. Guildford is considered to be the county town; however despite the town's designation, Surrey County Council has never been based there, being instead seated throughout its history in London. Since the borders of Surrey were altered in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963 which created Greater London, none of these places are now in Surrey, marking an example of a de facto capital, located outside of its administrative area. Surrey is divided into eleven districts: Elmbridge and Ewell, Mole Valley and Banstead, Spelthorne, Surrey Heath, Tandridge and Woking.
Services such as roads, mineral extraction licensing, strategic waste and recycling infrastructure, birth and death registration, social and children's services are administered by Surrey County Council. The London boroughs of Lambeth, Southwark and small parts of Lewisham and Bromley were in Surrey until 1889. Since the 1965 reform the bordering boroughs of the capital have been those taken from it in 1965 plus Bromley and Hounslow; the form of Surrey which remains since 1965 is a wealthy county due to economic, aesthetic and logistical factors. It has the highest GDP per capita of any English county, some of the highest property values outside Inner London and the highest cost of living in the UK outside of the capital. Surrey has the highest proportion of woodland in England, having been rural since it was shorn in 1965 of the urbanised swathes of South London which had hitherto been part of the county, it has large protected green spaces. It has four racecourses in horse racing, the most of any Home County and as at 2013 contained 141 golf courses including international competition venue Wentworth.
Surrey has proximity to London and to Heathrow and Gatwick airports, along with access to major arterial road routes including the M25, M3 and M23 and frequent rail services into Central London. Surrey is divided in two by the chalk ridge of the North Downs; the ridge is pierced by the rivers Wey and Mole, tributaries of the Thames, which formed the northern border of the county before modern redrawing of county boundaries, which has left part of its north bank within the county. To the north of the Downs the land is flat, forming part of the basin of the Thames; the geology of this area is dominated by London Clay in the east, Bagshot Sands in the west and alluvial deposits along the rivers. To the south of the Downs in the western part of the county are the sandstone Surrey Hills, while further east is the plain of the Low Weald, rising in the extreme southeast to the edge of the hills of the High Weald; the Downs and the area to the south form part of a concentric pattern of geological deposits which extends across southern Kent and most of Sussex, predominantly composed of Wealden Clay, Lower Greensand and the chalk of the Downs.
Much of Surrey is in the Metropolitan Green Belt. It contains valued reserves of mature woodland. Among its many notable beauty spots are Box Hill, Leith Hill, Frensham Ponds, Newlands Corner and Puttenham & Crooksbury Commons. Surrey is the most wooded county in England, with 22.4% coverage compared to a national average of 11.8% and as such is one of the few counties not to recommend new woodlands in the subordinate planning authorities' plans. Box Hill has the oldest untouched area of natural woodland in one of the oldest in Europe. Surrey contains England's principal concentration of lowland heath, on sandy soils in the west of the county. Agriculture not being intensive, there are many commons and access lands, together with an extensive network of footpaths and bridleways including the North Downs Way, a scenic long-distance path. Accordingly, Surrey provides many rural and semi-rural leisure activities, with a large horse population in modern terms; the highest elevation in Surrey is Leith Hill near Dorking.
It is 294 m above sea level and is the second highest point in southeastern England after Walbury Hill in West Berkshire, 297 m. Surrey has a population of 1.1 million people. Its largest town is Guildford, with a population of 77,057, they are followed by Ewell with 39,994 people and Camberley with 30,155. Towns of between 25,000 and 30,000 inhabitants are Ashford, Farnham and Redhill. Guildford is the historic county town, although the county administration was moved to Newington in 1791 and to Kingston upon Thames in 1893; the county counc
Sanderstead
Sanderstead is a village and medieval-founded church parish in the London Borough of Croydon. It takes in Purley Downs and the Sanderstead Plantation, a large wooded park that includes the animated second-highest point in London; the area sits above a dry valley at the edge of the built-up area of Greater London. Cementing its secular identity from the late 19th century until abolition in 1965 it had a civil parish council; the community had a smaller farming-centred economy until the mid 19th century. All Saints' Church's construction began in about 1230 followed by great alterations and affixing of monuments including a poem attributed to John Dryden, the first Poet Laureate nationally. Sanderstead station is at the foot of the dry valley and has frequent, fast trains to East Croydon, connected to a range of London terminals and interchanges. Sanderstead is claimed to an origin of the English Sanders surname, noting at least four separate geographical clusters formed by the 19th century, two of which were by 1881 far more populous.
Sanderstead's Interwar growth coincided with electrification of the Southern Railway leaving a suburban community of households having at least one commuter to central London or Croydon. There is evidence of prehistoric human activity around Sanderstead. In 1958–60 the Sanderstead Archaeological Group excavated in the vicinity of Sanderstead pond and revealed the presence of man as far back as the Mesolithic Period nearly 12,000 years ago, as well as pottery fragments dated between 100 AD and 1300 AD and a bronze belt from the end of the Saxon era. North of the village at Croham Hurst, upon a wooded hill, are circular barrows believed to be from a Bronze Age settlement; this is now part of a public open space and the site is marked by a brass monument. A Romano-British homestead was discovered during the construction of the Atwood School. During the 1980s, when the school was extended, further excavation revealed the remains of several round huts, hearths, a brooch, pottery, some of which hailed from North Africa.
An Anglo-Saxon reference to Sanderstead can be found in the will, dated 871, of Alfred, an ealdorman. The village lay within the Anglo-Saxon administrative division of Wallington hundred, it appears to have been given to St Peter's Abbey, Winchester by Æthelflæd, the wife of Edgar the Peaceful and mother of Edward the Martyr, where it remained after the Norman Conquest. Sanderstead appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Sandestede, belonging to St Peter's Abbey, Winchester, it had a noted population of 26 including 4 slaves and 1 cottager. Its Domesday assets were assessed as 5 hides, 10 carucates of arable land, it had wood worth 30 hogs. Its Domesday entry records that in the time of Edward the Confessor it was valued at 100 shillings, now 12 pounds; the village was granted to Sir John Gresham by Henry VIII following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was passed to his son Richard who subsequently sold it to John Ownsted, the transfer being ratified in 1591. Ownsted died without issue in 1600, devised his estates to his two sisters and cousin Harman Atwood, with Atwood subsequently purchasing the shares of his joint legatees.
The Atwood family had a long association with Sanderstead, with inscriptions at the local church indicating a presence in the village from the reign of Edward II. The manor house, known as Sanderstead Court, was remodelled by Harman Atwood; this large country house was first constructed in the early sixteenth century. The Atwoods continued to occupy the house until 1778, it was turned into a hotel in 1928, before the Second World War it was used by the Royal Air Force. It was badly damaged by fire in 1944 and was demolished in 1958. One small part of the hotel building does however still stand. On the site now stands "Sanderstead Court", a three-storey block of flats. One of the more curious aspects of Sanderstead is that it has no pub, unlike nearby Warlingham which has around six. On the edge of the village lies the site of the Old Saw Mill now home to a number of private residences and the picturesque setting for Sanderstead Cricket Club. Cricket has been played in the area since the 18th century, with matches recorded in 1731 and 1732.
The ground itself has been in use since 1883 and continues to the present day with four teams playing in the Surrey Championship and a number of other Colts and friendly teams. Located between Limpsfield Road and Kingswood Lane is the large Kings Wood, it derives its name from a small wood to the north of Kings Wood Lodge. In 1823, Ordnance Survey Maps called the wood Sanderstead Wood, it covers some 147½ acres, criss-crossed by ancient rides and is on flat ground. It is now public open space. There is the site of a Romano-British settlement on the northern boundary, a small farmstead undisturbed for 2000 years. Sanderstead has four schools, namely, it is conveniently placed for a number of others located within a couple of miles from the village including Croydon High School, Harris Academy Purley, Riddlesdown Collegiate, Royal Russell School, The Quest Academy, Thomas More Catholic School, Warlingham School, Whitgift School. The 2011 census showed that White British was the largest ethnic group in Sanderstead ward, forming 76% of the population.
Sanderstead has returned Conservative Party MPs to the local seat of Croydon Sout
Brighton Belle
The Brighton Belle was a named train, operated by the Southern Railway and subsequently by British Rail from Victoria Station in London to Brighton, on the Sussex coast. Commissioned as the flagship of the Southern Railway's mass electrification project, which commenced in January 1931, the world's only electric all-Pullman service ran daily between London Victoria and Brighton from 1 January 1933 until 30 April 1972; the London and South Coast Railway began using Pullman cars in its express trains in 1875, in December 1881 they introduced the first all-Pullman train in the UK. Known as the Pullman Limited, this ran between London Victoria and Brighton via Horsham and subsequently ordinary rolling stock was added to the service. In 1888 a second all-Pullman service was instituted, using cars lit by electricity and designed by William Stroudley; the LB&SCR was the origin of the British cream Pullman livery. In 1903 R. J. Billinton changed the colour of the ordinary LB&SCR coaches to umber brown with white or cream upper panels, in 1906 this colour scheme was adopted by the Pullman Car Co. with the name of the car in large gilt letters on the lower panel and flanked on each side by a coloured transfer of the Pullman Company's crest.
Another all-Pullman service was introduced in 1908 under the name of the Southern Belle. Contemporary advertising by the LB&SCR claimed that this was "... the most luxurious train in the world...". In 1908 this could be experienced for a special London Victoria to Brighton day return fare of 12 shillings, a premium rate at a time when average earnings were around £1 a week; the Southern Belle was steam hauled until 1 January 1933. Trial trains had commenced running between London and Brighton on 2 November 1932, using an experimental five-coach unit and examples of the new rolling stock were exhibited at London Victoria and Brighton stations from 29 December 1932. With the arrival of the mid-day Victoria to Brighton service at Brighton Station on 29 June 1934, the Mayor of Brighton, Margaret Hardy, renamed the train the Brighton Belle, it retained this title until withdrawal; the service was scheduled to take 60 minutes for the 51-mile express journey. Three five-car all-Pullman electric multiple units designated 5-BEL were commissioned by the Southern Railway as the flagship of the world's then-largest electrification project, which covered over 160 track miles.
The 15 cars – built in 1932 by Metropolitan-Cammell at its Saltley works in Birmingham – were operated in trains comprising two units, the remaining unit held in reserve. The'spare' multiple unit set was used for a Sunday Pullman service from Eastbourne, known as the Eastbourne Pullman for much of the 1950s, but this service was discontinued in 1957. During the Second World War the service was suspended after Unit 3052 was badly damaged by aerial bombing at London Victoria; the trains were refurbished and overhauled in 1955, but by 1972 the stock was old and rode poorly by contemporary standards. Despite protests, the decision was taken not to replace the rolling stock and the service was withdrawn on 30 April 1972; every car was preserved, in most cases to meet the ambitions of major breweries to'bolt on' Pullman restaurants to pubs and hotels, although most were removed quickly because of the high cost of maintenance and refurbishment. A number were progressively acquired by the Venice Simplon Orient Express, while one still remains in use as B&B accommodation at the Little Mill Inn, Derbyshire.
Motor brake car 90 was used for passenger service on the Nene Valley Railway between 1980 and 1990, but was subsequently scrapped at Bury in 1995 following a series of arson attacks. The Southern ran three Pullman trains with the suffix Belle; the others were the Devon Belle. British Railways introduced the Thanet Belle in 1948. A campaign to return the Brighton Belle to mainline service was launched by the 5-BEL Trust in 2009; the trustees had been concerned for some time about the worrying state of electric train preservation in Britain and wanted to raise the profile of the issue and to deal with the issues of financial support and covered accommodation. The project was launched at the National Railway Museum following the acquisition of two of the surviving 14 cars; when the 5-BEL project is completed, it will be returned to mainline service. Despite the high cost of the restoration the programme is seen as an investment for future generations. Progress with the restoration of the Brighton Belle to mainline use will depend in part on the level of public donations.
This is the first time. A short train of three cars will undergo mainline proving trials in the near future, with mainline excursions with a four car unit commencing upon testing success. During February 2011, Driving Car 88 was displayed on the Brighton seafront to celebrate the acquisition of the Trust's fifth car; the fifth 5BEL car required was Pullman First Doris based at the Bluebell Railway for the Bluebell's pullman rake, thus a swap was arranged. The 5-BEL Trust had purchased Golden Arrow Pullman Kitchen Car Carina and supplied this to the Bluebell railway in exchange for Doris, allowing the Bluebell Railway to complete a five-car a
BBC One
BBC One is the first and principal television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution, it was renamed BBC TV in 1960, using this name until the launch of the second BBC channel BBC2 in 1964, whereupon the BBC TV channel became known as BBC1, with the current spelling adopted in 1997. The channel's annual budget for 2012–13 was £1.14 billion. The channel is funded by the television licence fee together with the BBC's other domestic television stations, shows uninterrupted programming without commercial advertising, it is the most watched television channel in the United Kingdom, ahead of its traditional rival for ratings leadership, ITV. As of June 2013 the channel controller for BBC One was Charlotte Moore, who succeeded Danny Cohen as an Acting Controller from May 2013; the BBC began its own regular television programming from the basement of Broadcasting House, London, on 22 August 1932.
The BBC Television Service began regular broadcasts on 2 November 1936 from a converted wing of the Alexandra Palace in London. On 1 September 1939, two days before Britain declared war on Germany, the station was taken off air with little warning, with one of the last programmes to be shown before the suspension of the service being a Mickey Mouse cartoon. BBC Television returned on 7 June 1946 at 15:00. Jasmine Bligh, one of the original announcers, made the first announcement, saying, "Good afternoon everybody. How are you? Do you remember me, Jasmine Bligh?". The Mickey Mouse cartoon of 1939 was repeated twenty minutes later; the BBC held a statutory monopoly on television broadcasting in the United Kingdom until the first Independent Television station began to broadcast on 22 September 1955, when ITV started broadcasting. The competition forced the channel to change its identity and priorities following a large reduction in its audience; the 1962 Pilkington Report on the future of broadcasting noticed this, that ITV lacked any serious programming.
It therefore decided that Britain's third television station should be awarded to the BBC. The station, renamed BBC TV in 1960, became BBC1 when BBC2 was launched on 20 April 1964 transmitting an incompatible 625-line image on UHF; the only way to receive all channels was to use a complex "dual-standard" 405- and 625-line, VHF and UHF, with both a VHF and a UHF aerial. Old 405-line-only sets became obsolete in 1985, when transmission in the standard ended, although standards converters have become available for enthusiasts who collect and restore such TVs. BBC1 was based at the purpose-built BBC Television Centre at White City, London between 1960 and 2013. Television News continued to use Alexandra Palace as its base—by early 1968 it had converted one of its studios to colour—before moving to new purpose-built facilities at Television Centre on 20 September 1969. In the weeks leading up to 15 November 1969, BBC1 unofficially transmitted the occasional programme in its new colour system, to test it.
At midnight on 15 November with ITV and two years after BBC2, BBC1 began 625-line PAL colour programming on UHF with a broadcast of a concert by Petula Clark. Colour transmissions could be received on monochrome 625-line sets until the end of analogue broadcasting. In terms of audience share, the most successful period for BBC1 was under Bryan Cowgill between 1973 and 1977, when the channel achieved an average audience share of 45%; this period is still regarded by many as a golden age of the BBC's output, with the BBC achieving a high standard across its entire range of series, plays, light entertainment and documentaries. On 30 December 1980, the BBC announced their intention to introduce a new breakfast television service to compete with TV-am; the BBC stated it would start broadcasting before TV-am, but made clear their hands were tied until November 1981 when the new licence fee income became available, to help finance extending broadcast hours, with the hope of starting in 1982. On 17 January 1983, the first edition of Breakfast Time was shown on BBC1, becoming the first UK wide breakfast television service and continued to lead in the ratings until 1984.
In 1984, Bill Cotton become managing director of Television at the BBC, set about overhauling BBC1, slated for poor home grown shows, its heavy reliance on US imports, with Dallas and The Thorn Birds being BBC1's highest rated programmes and ratings being over 20% behind ITV. Cotton recruited Michael Grade to become Controller of BBC1, the first time the Corporation had recruited someone outside of the BBC, replacing Alan Hart, criticised for his lack of knowledge in general entertainment, as he was head of BBC Sport prior to 1981; the first major overhaul was to axe the unpopular Sixty Minutes current affairs programme: this was a replacement for the news and magazine show Nationwide. Its replacement was the BBC Six O'Clock News, a straight new programme in a bid to shore up its failing early evening slot, it was believed the BBC were planning to cut short the evening news and move more light entertainment programming in from the 18:20 slot, but this was dismissed. The Miss Great Britain contest was dropped, being described as verging on the too offensive after the January 1985 contest, with Worlds Strongest Man and International Superstar being axed.
BBC1 was relaunched on 18 February 1985 with a new look, new programming including Wogan, EastEnders and a revised schedule to help streamline and maintain viewers thr
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online news coverage; the service maintains 50 foreign news bureaus with more than 250 correspondents around the world. Fran Unsworth has been Director of News and Current Affairs since January 2018; the department's annual budget is in excess of £350 million. BBC News' domestic and online news divisions are housed within the largest live newsroom in Europe, in Broadcasting House in central London. Parliamentary coverage is broadcast from studios in Millbank in London. Through the BBC English Regions, the BBC has regional centres across England, as well as national news centres in Northern Ireland and Wales. All nations and English regions produce their own local news programmes and other current affairs and sport programmes.
The BBC is a quasi-autonomous corporation authorised by Royal Charter, making it operationally independent of the government, who have no power to appoint or dismiss its director-general, required to report impartially. As with all major media outlets it has been accused of political bias from across the political spectrum, both within the UK and abroad; the British Broadcasting Company broadcast its first radio bulletin from radio station.2LO In 14 November 1922. Wishing to avoid competition, newspaper publishers persuaded the government to ban the BBC from broadcasting news before 7:00 pm, to force it to use wire service copy instead of reporting on its own. On Easter weekend in 1930, this reliance on newspaper wire services left the radio news service with no information to report after saying There is no news today. Piano music was played instead; the BBC gained the right to edit the copy and, in 1934, created its own news operation. However, it could not broadcast news before 6 PM until World War II.
Gaumont British and Movietone cinema newsreels had been broadcast on the TV service since 1936, with the BBC producing its own equivalent Television Newsreel programme from January 1948. A weekly Children's Newsreel was inaugurated on 23 April 1950, to around 350,000 receivers; the network began simulcasting its radio news on television in 1946, with a still picture of Big Ben. Televised bulletins began on 5 July 1954, broadcast from leased studios within Alexandra Palace in London; the public's interest in television and live events was stimulated by Elizabeth II's coronation in 1953. It is estimated that up to 27 million people viewed the programme in the UK, overtaking radio's audience of 12 million for the first time; those live pictures were fed from 21 cameras in central London to Alexandra Palace for transmission, on to other UK transmitters opened in time for the event. That year, there were around two million TV Licences held in the UK, rising to over three million the following year, four and a half million by 1955.
Television news, although physically separate from its radio counterpart, was still under radio news' control – correspondents provided reports for both outlets–and that first bulletin, shown on 5 July 1954 on the BBC television service and presented by Richard Baker, involved his providing narration off-screen while stills were shown. This was followed by the customary Television Newsreel with a recorded commentary by John Snagge, it was revealed that this had been due to producers fearing a newsreader with visible facial movements would distract the viewer from the story. On-screen newsreaders were introduced a year in 1955 – Kenneth Kendall, Robert Dougall, Richard Baker–three weeks before ITN's launch on 21 September 1955. Mainstream television production had started to move out of Alexandra Palace in 1950 to larger premises – at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd's Bush, west London – taking Current Affairs with it, it was from here that the first Panorama, a new documentary programme, was transmitted on 11 November 1953, with Richard Dimbleby becoming anchor in 1955.
On 18 February 1957, the topical early-evening programme Tonight, hosted by Cliff Michelmore and designed to fill the airtime provided by the abolition of the Toddlers' Truce, was broadcast from Marconi's Viking Studio in St Mary Abbott's Place, Kensington – with the programme moving into a Lime Grove studio in 1960, where it maintained its production office. On 28 October 1957, the Today programme, a morning radio programme, was launched in central London on the Home Service. In 1958, Hugh Carleton Greene became head of Current Affairs, he set up a BBC study group whose findings, published in 1959, were critical of what the television news operation had become under his predecessor, Tahu Hole. The report proposed that the head of television news should take control, that the television service should have a proper newsroom of its own, with an editor-of-the-day. On 1 January 1960, Greene became Director-General and brought about big changes at BBC Television and BBC Television News. BBC Television News had been created in 1955, in response to the founding of ITN.
The changes made by Greene were aimed at making BBC reporting more similar to ITN, rated by study groups held by Greene. A newsroom was created at Alexandra Palace, television reporters were recruited and given the opportunity to write and voice their own scripts–without the "impossible burden" of having to cover stories for radio too. In 1987 thirty years John B
ITV News
ITV News is the branding of news programmes on the British television network ITV. ITV has a long tradition of television news. Independent Television News was founded to provide news bulletins for the network in 1955, has since continued to produce all news programmes on ITV; the channel's news coverage has won awards from the Royal Television Society, Emmy Awards and BAFTAs. Between 2004 and 2008, the ITV Evening News held the title of "RTS News Programme of the Year"; the flagship ITV News at Ten has won numerous BAFTA awards, being named "RTS News Programme of the Year" in 2011 and 2015. ITV News has the second-largest television news audience in the United Kingdom, second only to BBC News. However, its £43 million annual news budget is dwarfed by that of the publicly funded BBC, which spends £89.5 million annually on news-gathering, plus a further £23.1 million on its rolling news channel. All national news programmes on ITV carried ITN's own brand; as the ITV network consolidated from the mid 1990s onwards, ITN branding of news programmes was dropped in March 1999 following the introduction of the ITV News brand.
ITN remains the producer of all the national ITV News programmes. ITN was set up by the Independent Television Authority to provide a new type of news service for the upcoming commercial television service Independent Television. Both ITN and ITV were launched on 22 September 1955, the news service broke new ground by introducing in-vision newscasters and reporter packages; the unique, probing reporting style of Robin Day caused shock among politicians, finding themselves questioned continually for information – this had never been the case with the BBC. ITN boasted the first British female newsreader, Barbara Mandell, in 1956. Into the 1960s, reporters such as George Ffitch, Alastair Burnet, Gordon Honeycombe, Huw Thomas and Sandy Gall emerged as aspiring newscasters, under the leadership of editor Geoffrey Cox; the original ITN logo, featuring a large "T" flanked either side by "I" and "N", was used from 1955 up to 1970. The original ITN theme tune was an excerpt of Non-Stop, a piece of light music composed by John Malcolm, used from 1955 up to 1982.
As the years went on, full-length ITN news programmes were launched with their own theme music and particular branding, meaning that by its end, Non-Stop was only in use on generic news bulletins at weekends. In 1967, ITN editor Geoffrey Cox suggested launching a half-hour news bulletin for ITV, every weeknight. ITV executives, were sceptical of that idea, because it was thought that viewers would not want a full 30 minutes of news every Monday to Friday. However, the idea was approved on the condition it ran for a 13-week trial, News at Ten was born on 3 July 1967. ITN's head newscasters – Alastair Burnet, Andrew Gardner, George Ffitch – presented the first News at Ten, the bulletin became so popular with viewers that it was kept in the schedules after its initial 13 weeks; the programme's titles used an excerpt of The Awakening, a piece of dramatic music composed by Johnny Pearson. The famous chimes of the Westminster Clock Tower – affectionately known as the bongs – separated each headline as it was read out.
The early opening title sequences were simplistic. In 1970, a new title sequence was introduced: a slow pan of the Houses of Parliament was followed by a sharp zoom into the face of "Big Ben" showing the time of 22:00; the text "Independent Television News" was shown at the start of the sequence, followed by the individual words "NEWS", "at" and "TEN", which appeared in time to the title music. The sequence was amended a year to feature the new ITN logo at the beginning; the logo, introduced in 1970, was a simple sans-serif outline of the phrase "ITN". The basic concept of the logo remains today. On 16 October 1972, a twenty-minute lunchtime bulletin was introduced into the ITV schedule – First Report, hosted by Robert Kee and ran from 12:40 to 13:00; this was followed on 6 September 1976 by the introduction of a new evening bulletin, the News at 545, which ran from 17:45 to 18:00. By this time, with three regular ITN bulletins throughout the day – and each having their own look and specially composed music – the original ITN Non-Stop theme music was only seen on generic summaries and weekend bulletins.
In 1982, it was replaced with a synthesised alternative. First Report was moved to 13:00 and retitled News at One in 1976. Michael Nicholson continued as main newscaster of the News at 545, with Martyn Lewis replacing Parkin as the relief presenter. In 1986, Nicholson was replaced by Alastair Stewart. Leonard Parkin retired in 1987, Peter Sissons became a main newscaster for ITN's Channel 4 News – it was at this point that the programme revamped, it was moved to 12:30, appropriately became the News at 12:30. Julia Somerville joined ITN from the BBC's Nine O'Clock News to host the new programme, with John Suchet and Jon Snow acting as relief presenters. In 1988, the programme returned to
