Call for BBC to abandon its plans for a 10 o'clock news

Culture Secretary Chris Smith has called on the BBC to abandon plans to reschedule its evening news bulletin to 10pm after ITV yesterday decided to restore a news broadcast at the same time.

Culture Secretary Chris Smith has called on the BBC to abandon plans to reschedule its evening news bulletin to 10pm after ITV yesterday decided to restore a news broadcast at the same time.

He told BBC News 24 he would have preferred ITV to air its nightly news for 20 minutes at 10pm on every night rather than just from Monday to Thursday, but he still welcomed the decision.

And he said the BBC should now drop plans to move the 9 O'Clock News: "I hope the BBC will now have a think about that because having a head-to-head conflict between the main news bulletins of the BBC and the ITV I don't think would make sense."

But yesterday the BBC said it had no plans to change its proposal.

Mr Smith also told News 24 that ITN had lost 1.5 million viewers over the last year and this was damaging to democracy.

After the late evening news moved to 11pm ratings plummeted and there were calls for the original show to be restored.