Issues at ITN in London leads to national bulletins decamping to Leeds, with London regional news bulletins cancelled.
Bulletins on ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 were all affected by power supply issues on Monday. As a result ITV’s Lunchtime and Evening News bulletins have switched to Leeds, coming from the studios of ITV Yorkshire’s news programme Calendar. Its Lunchtime bulletin was headed by Gamal Fahnbulleh from ITV Granada. Mary Nightingale was brought up to Leeds to host the evening bulletin. Combined with the standard ITV backdrop, casual viewers may not have noticed any differences.
ITV London was unable to broadcast its regional service at all. Viewers were handed over to ITV Meridian, the news service for southern England.
Channel 4’s late morning news bulletin made it to air, but suffered from technical problems, with presenter Matt Frei left to read the weather forecast without on-screen map.
On Channel 5, the main 5pm bulletin decamped to a temporary back-up studio. The programme went on-air without in-house editing capacity and the usual graphics. Earlier in the day, Jeremy Vine’s live programme was cancelled.
ITN usually produces the news for all three channels from its main headquarters on Grays Inn Road.
The company previously suffered power supply issues on the 22nd February, which resulted in the ITV Lunchtime News falling off-air mid-programme.
Updated 05/04/2022 – 08:16