Anchors away!

Heavyweight names and genuine scoops are winning ITV News Channel acclaim, says Ian Burrell

"We've got a hostage situation," Dominic Crossley-Holland, editor of the ITV News Channel announces somewhat disconcertingly as I walk into his office on a bitterly cold London morning.

"We've got a hostage situation," Dominic Crossley-Holland, editor of the ITV News Channel announces somewhat disconcertingly as I walk into his office on a bitterly cold London morning.

Shortly before my arrival, a film has surfaced of American citizen Roy Hallams, making an appeal to the camera while having the barrel of an assault rifle held inches from his head.

The footage is deeply disturbing and is illustrative of the challenges of 24-hour news services and the pressures on executives such as Crossley-Holland. He chose to show the pictures of Hallams because "the judgement was made that we would want to hear what he had to say".

Still only 37, Crossley-Holland has been working at Gray's Inn Road all his working life. An ITN trainee at 21, he was made deputy editor of News at Ten at 24 and first edited the bulletin at the tender age of 26. But for the past 12 months his focus has been firmly fixed on the rolling news channel.

To turn this relatively fledgling operation into real competition for Sky News (est 1989) and BBC News 24 (est 1997) is a serious challenge. Crossley-Holland insists that not only is it a battle he can win, but it is also a battle he is already starting to win.

Ratings figures would not appear to entirely bear this out: ITV News Channel has a weekly reach of three million, putting it a million or so behind its two rivals. But unquestionably the channel is growing: it was watched by 16.4 million people last year and, editorially, is proving an increasingly tough competitor to its rivals. Indeed, Crossley-Holland wants the channel to be judged, in these early days of its existence, by the quality of its output rather than the size of its audience.

Peer approval has already been won, he suggests, thanks to the channel's acclaimed coverage of the Beslan massacre, its scoop on David Blunkett's resignation, its pictures of the flooding of Boscastle, its package on the night of the American election and the reporting of the tsunami.

Beslan was a particular triumph, with reporter Julian Manyon the first journalist inside the school and able to relay, over the sound of gunfire, details of the unfolding tragedy to presenter Alastair Stewart.

The way Stewart calmly anchored coverage, which developed into a four and a half hour simulcast with ITV1, has seen him nominated in the Royal Television Society awards as presenter of the year. The coverage also won ITV News the Best News Programme award in last week's Broadcast magazine awards.

For Crossley-Holland, the ITV News Channel's capability of calling on the services of such highly experienced television journalists is what marks it out from its competition. "Twenty-four-hour news channels are the most demanding of all in terms of presenting. Anything can happen and often does. It's not a place where people can learn and cut their teeth," he says. "You need experienced newscasters who have got a great deal of journalistic experience."

Rolling news is one area of television work where a few wrinkles and grey hairs are no handicap, Crossley-Holland believes. "All three channels are chasing the same rather small audience. Predominantly ABC1 males over 50, newsaholics who probably watch more news than is good for them," he says. "That's why veteran newscasters who are recognised and trusted by the audience are so important."

He proudly reels off a roll call of heavy-hitters such as Nick Owen, Mark Austin, Andrew Harvey and Angela Rippon and reporters such as Manyon, Bill Neely and John Irvine - all the big names from the ITV roster.

It is Stewart who has really left his imprint on the channel and, as we speak, his two-hour weekday morning Live with Alastair Stewart show is on air. Neil Kinnock is this morning's guest, enthusiastically endorsing Gordon Brown as a future prime minister.

After coming off air, Stewart joins us. "It's an extraordinary battlefield," he says of the rolling news market. "For all its resources and brand strength, I have never completely understood what News 24 is seeking to do. It doesn't seem to complement or build upon the enormous strength of the BBC news brand."

Stewart says that Sky, on the other hand, knows exactly what it is doing. "It's almost overburdened with resources, courtesy of Mr Murdoch," he says. "It's the rapid-fire instant reaction service which in many senses is the one to beat. I don't think - with the notable exception of Adam Boulton - that it punches its weight in analysis and background, but it's an awesome competitor in breaking news."

The ITV News Channel emerged from the embers of the ITN News Channel, which was launched in 2000 and provided a simple headline-based service known in the trade as a 15-minute wheel. "That didn't work," says Crossley-Holland succinctly.

The relaunch - and rebranding as the ITV News Channel - in February 2004 is what the network's editor refers to as "year zero".

An injection of cash from the unified ITV saw the introduction of an immense video wall digital set - an alarming shade of bright green in real life - capable of transforming the studio into downtown Baghdad or the Oval Office.

The uniting of the ITV companies also meant that the 24-hour channel could draw on a regional news infrastructure that rivalled the BBC's and gave it an edge over Sky News. "I can beat Sky daily on any domestic story," boasts Crossley-Holland, adding that ITV had pictures from Boscastle 12 hours before its Isleworth-based rival and noting that the days when HTV sold pictures of a brawling John Prescott to Sky are long over.

Despite the fighting talk, Crossley-Holland admits there is room for improvement. Unlike Sky and News 24, ITV News Channel offers no red button interactive service.

The size of the channel's audience is also driven down, he claims, by its position on the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG), where it is in eighth place in the news and documentaries section in Sky digital homes, below American news channels and even the Welsh language service S4C-2. In such homes, the ITV service is trounced by its main rivals.

In Freeview homes it's a different story, with the ITV News Channel placed second on the EPG behind the BBC and attracting a greater share of the audience than the Murdoch-backed channel. ITV News is so convinced of the importance of EPG rankings that it has taken a complaint to Ofcom.

In a recent interview with The Independent, Rachel Attwell, head of BBC News 24, suggested that the ITV News Channel was running a poor third to the BBC and Sky. She also claimed that the BBC's rivals were more prone to mistakes but were held less accountable by the rest of the media, an observation that angered Crossley-Holland.

He believes there is a clear gap in the market for the ITV product, somewhere between the offerings of his two rivals. News 24, he claims, is undergoing an "an ID crisis". And in a comment aimed at Sky he says: "What news channels now need to do is provide context, analysis and range of opinion. Not an amorphous mess of rolling news."

The ITV News Channel, he claims, has got the balance right. "I think we are mixing the best of what the BBC can do and what Sky can do," he says.