ITV Lunchtime News
afternoon news programme on the British television network ITV
The ITV Lunchtime News is the afternoon news programme produced by ITN on the British television network ITV. It airs Monday to Friday from 12:30pm or 1:30pm, covering British national and international news stories and is presented by various ITV News presenters, most commonly Nina Hossain.
History
Television broadcasting hours in the United Kingdom had been tightly regulated and controlled by the British government until 1972, when the then Conservative government under Prime Minister Edward Heath decided to end all limits and restrictions on the broadcasting hours of television.
ITV had been campaigning for the end of the restrictions since the mid-1960s, and finally on 19 January 1972, the government announced the lifting of all restrictions, allowing proper daytime television to launch on both the BBC and ITV.
ITN had provided a short lunchtime news summary to start the ITV schedules on a Saturday since 1959, with an afternoon news summary on a Sunday starting in the mid-1960s, however it was the lifting of the restrictions on 16 October 1972 which helped ITN to launch a codified, more solid weekday lunchtime news programme as part of a raft of new programming which would now take up broadcasting hours which were up to 1972 restricted to schools programming and adult education.
The programme was first broadcast on 16 October 1972 as First Report, a twenty-minute bulletin presented by Robert Kee at 12:40pm. The bulletin was moved to 1:00pm on 30 September 1974 and retitled as News at One on 13 September 1976. Leonard Parkin and Peter Sissons alternated as the programme's lead presenters in the same year after Kee's departure.
On 20 July 1987, the bulletin was relaunched as News at 12:30. Jon Snow and former BBC newsreader Julia Somerville fronted alternate editions of the programme. On 7 March 1988, ITV's daytime programming was rejigged and the bulletin was moved back to its 1:00pm timeslot. News at One later relaunched on 16 October 1989 with John Suchet as its lead presenter.
The public source identifies “ITV Lunchtime News” as afternoon news programme on the British television network ITV. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Lunchtime, News and afternoon.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5975108. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972, 1959, 1974 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “ITV Lunchtime News” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.