ITV Documentaries

And Here Is The News (2015x40)

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It’s 60 years since the first newsreader appeared on British television. And Here Is The News features some of Britain’s best-known newsreaders as they reveal what life has been like behind the studio desk, and how the role has changed beyond recognition over six decades. The programme hears how the BBC, after learning about the impending launch of Independent Television News and their plans to put newsreaders on camera, beat ITV to it with Richard Baker and Kenneth Kendall becoming the first in-vision news presenters on British screens on September 4th 1955. Michael Aspel, one of the BBC’s earliest newsreaders recalls when ITV launched 18 days later on the 22nd September 1955 - ITN deciding to go with a famous face to read their first news bulletin, choosing Christopher Chataway, an athlete who had broken the 5,000m world record. The documentary reveals how ITV’s News at Ten was initially only due to be on air for a 12 week trial run to fill the schedules over the summer of 1967. Newscaster Alastair Stewart tells us what he feels was the driving force behind the programme’s early success - the role of the double anchor - which included the likes of the charismatic duo Andrew Gardner and Reginald Bosanquet. The BBC’s Angela Rippon sets the record straight over her alleged professional relationship with ITN’s Anna Ford during the 1970’s. Angela recalls the newspapers going mad over their ‘rivalry’, when in fact they became close personal friends. Angela also relives the moment she transformed the newsreader into a sex symbol after 26 million people saw her reveal her legs during a sketch on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special in 1976. Also within the programme, news anchors share the moments that meant the most to them, including the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when technology had advanced enough for news teams from the BBC and ITN to anchor live from the Brandenburg Gate. And Here Is The News also