London News Network

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London News Network (or LNN) was a television news and facilities organisation in London. It was created in 1992 as a joint operation between London's two ITV contractors, Carlton Television and London Weekend Television, with each company holding a 50% stake. LNN debuted on air on 1 January 1993, on the same day that Carlton replaced Thames Television as London's weekday ITV franchise. Prior to this, LWT had its own news department, separate from that of Thames.

The company's facility was located at the LWT building on the South Bank. A view of the London skyline, including St. Paul's Cathedral, could be seen from the window set of Studio 7, the main news studio.

1 Programming
2 Transmission
3 Presenters
4 External links

[edit] Programming

Among LNN's productions were London Today and the flagship evening bulletin London Tonight. LNN was in charge of the production of both programmes until 2004, when ITN took over those responsibilities. The final edition of London Tonight produced by LNN was broadcast on 29 February 2004, following which LNN was absorbed as part of ITN.

The date also marked the move of London Today and London Tonight from The London Studios to the headquarters of ITN on Grays Inn Road, London. The familiar London skyline backdrop for its news programmes is maintained, however, thanks to a fixed live video feed.

Sports programming was often produced for the London ITV region by LNN, designated by the "LSN/London Sports Network" end caption, which would be seen at the end of each programme.

[edit] Transmission

Aside from merging the production of news and sports programming for the region into the new venture, LWT and Carlton took the view that instead of having two transmission centres in different buildings, neither on air at the same time as the other, it would make financial sense for the transmission departments to be merged as part of the new company. To that end, from the start in 1993, LNN took over responsibility for the transmission of Carlton and LWT to the viewer at home.

The companies stopped short of handing over full control of presentation and scheduling, however, and planning and scheduling staff, along with the continuity announcers (the "voices" of the stations), were retained separately by Carlton and LWT. This meant that, uniquely for the time, the transmission controllers (later "network directors" - a change only in name) and the continuity announcers worked for different companies and answered to different management.

Carlton and LWT effectively shared the position of what was known as "nominated contractor" in the ITV network. The responsibilites of this ranged from contingency planning and coordinating the network's response to, for example, major breaking news to the provision of the "Network Feed", this being the "clean" feed of programmes to all the other contractors in the ITV Network. To this end, LNN operated two tranmission feeds: one to the London transmitter at Crystal Palace and its dependent relays, and another to the other ITV control rooms around the country. The latter was provided without announcements, commercials or interstitial material (except during times of a "presented feed", such as during the shared overnight service). The network feed was known as "KRS-17/67" - referring to the circuits (17 the original analogue and 67 the latterday digital) allocated to it by BT Broadcast between the South Bank and the BT Tower (the LWT building stands on a stretch of the South Bank known as the "King's Reach", and "KRS" an acronym for "King's Reach Studios").

The LNN transmission department has latterly been absorbed into the merged ITV plc.