ITV Nightscreen axed

[Brekkie]

Wasn't Nightfinder more of a replacement for things like Jobfinder and similar services in other regions?

[Orry Verducci]

The main channels are restricted in the amount of teleshopping they can show - I think it's three hours between midnight and 6am, although both ITV and C5 seem to have a standard cut off of 3am.

I'm not entirely sure but I don't believe there's a three hour limit. I work at Ideal World, and when the clocks go back ITV have let us have longer than three hours, going to 4am BST/3am GMT.

I believe the current rule is that PSB's can air teleshopping between midnight and 6am. How much they air and at what time within that window is up to them.

[Stuart]

I don't understand why the main channels try to provide a '24 hour service' by filling some hours with either simulcasting (BBC One/BBC News/BBC World News), so I'm not surprised that ITV are stopping Nightscreen.

Just close down for those hours. There are download services available to us suffering from insomnia.

[James2001]

Nightscreen is effectively as good as shutting down. It's not really any different to Pages from Ceefax or 4-tel on view.

[Joe]

I don't understand why the main channels try to provide a '24 hour service' by filling some hours with either simulcasting (BBC One/BBC News/BBC World News), so I'm not surprised that ITV are stopping Nightscreen.

Just close down for those hours. There are download services available to us suffering from insomnia.

Equally, why not show what they do now?

[Asa]

Equally, why not show what they do now?

Because there's no benefit to ITV showing Nightscreen now that OFCOM have closed the loophole over self promotion counting towards their regional quota. So ITV's solution...the most basic programme you could offer that's presumably still being produced outside London. Not sure what OFCOM could do short of some arbitrary 'quality' threshold a programme must reach to count.

(EDIT: Ignore me if you meant 'just show anything instead of closing down'!)

[Brekkie]

Very little info obviously so far but is it possible it's now a paid slot which will bring in some income, though you'd think in that case it would be branded so you "Unwind with" the relevant sponsor.

[Joe]

(EDIT: Ignore me if you meant 'just show anything instead of closing down'!)

That is indeed what I meant. Stuart said - ‘why show anything? Close down’ - but why is that better than something, anything, even if it’s mindless filler or simulcast. After all, we aren’t forced to watch it.

[excel99]

Because there's no benefit to ITV showing Nightscreen now that OFCOM have closed the loophole over self promotion counting towards their regional quota. So ITV's solution...the most basic programme you could offer that's presumably still being produced outside London. Not sure what OFCOM could do short of some arbitrary 'quality' threshold a programme must reach to count.

To me the action for Ofcom would be to exclude anything between Midnight and 6am from contributing to the out of London quota

[Mateus Honrado]

About the end of Nightscreen, I'm not really surprised about it, if I'm being honest.

[Steve Williams]

For years ITV were basically the only channel broadcasting overnight, so they had the market sewn up. Their only "competition" for ages were occasional OU programmes, and later on BBC Select, Learning Zone and 4Schools programmes which I think it's fair to say very few would have been interested in. Not many people had satellite and cable back then, and even if they did not many channels broadcast 24 hours anyway.

I think it was 1997 when there was first some real alternative- you had Channel 4 going 24 hours, Channel 5 launching and BBC One starting overnight News 24 simulcasts within a matter of months of each other. I guess with hindsight it's not suprising ITV Nightscreen launched not long after, those must have sapped a fair bit of profitiability from ITV Night time and Nightscreen was probably a way of cutting the budget.

Yes, this is very true - thirty years ago, your options if you were awake after midnight were ITV, Radio 2 and your ILR station. I used to be fascinated by the overnight ITV schedules in the Radio Times, with all those programmes I would never, ever get to see, and I remember being very excited when we had to get up at 3am to catch the plane to go on holiday in 1992 and specifically turning the telly on to see the likes of Video View. When I got a video in the mid-nineties I did start recording some of this stuff, including all 52 episodes of Bushell on the Box, and it turns out most of it was more exciting in my imagination.

But as you say, there was a huge expansion of broadcasting hours in the nineties, on TV and radio. I remember someone saying that for a time you had a new national 24 hour radio service every year, with Radio 1 going 24 hours in 1991, then Classic FM, Virgin, 5 Live and Talk Radio launching in consecutive years. The Learning Zone was a tentative step forward and then in 1997 you had BBC1 and C4 going 24 hours (I know the former wasn't technically the case, but it was broadcasting) and C5 was 24 hours at its launch, so ITV's monopoly had long gone.

[RyoG]

^ I remember reading a TV mag, asking my uncle what "Jobfinder" was and he told me it was a series about a guy going around looking for public toilets that hadn't been flushed.

I believed it!

[IdentFan101]

Last ever ITV Nightscreen (no special announcement, just a mention about The Chase on ITV Hub):
https://youtu.be/P_XqW6CzERA

[Andrew]

Interesting that it doesn’t even start, they just opt into something that is already running

[Char]

Quite underwhelming, to be honest.