Sky News Today

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Sky News Today
Sky News Today with Dermot Murnaghan
Created by	Sky News
Starring	Dermot Murnaghan Emma Crosby
Country of origin	UK - Broadcast Internationally
Production
Running time	4 hours
Broadcast
Original channel	Sky News
Picture format	16:9 (UK) 4:3 (International)
Original airing	2002

Sky News Today is a programme on Sky News which currently runs between 9:00am and 1:00pm and is presented by Dermot Murnaghan with news summaries read by Emma Crosby.

1 Overview
2 Presenter history
- 2.1 Morning shift
- 2.2 Afternoon shift
3 References

[edit] Overview

Launched by Sky News in 1998, Sky News Today ran from 12-2 pm every weekday afternoon. The lack of differentiation in terms of content and tone however, meant that there was no clear focus to the segment in a way that there later would be.

After being dropped in the autumn of 2001 as the channel shifted to more rolling output the program was resurected in 2002, presented by Martin Stanford and Julie Etchingham between 10:00am and 1:00pm. The show remained like this until, in 2005, when Sky News underwent a major relaunch, and a second 'shift' was established to run between 2:00pm and 5:00pm in addition to the morning shift which now ran between 9:00am and 12:00pm. At this time, the show was presented by three presenters simultaneously.

In 2006 several changes were made to the format and an increasingly large amount of time was spent at the news desk rather than presenting the show from different locations around the Sky News Centre.

In October 2007, Sky made the move to single headed presentation with Julie Etchingham becoming the anchor of what was branded on press releases as 'Sky Today' however on air it is referred to as 'Sky News Today'. News summaries are presented by Colin Brazier.

From Tuesday 8th January 2008, former BBC Breakfast anchor Dermot Murnaghan replaced Julie Etchingham as main presenter of the show. Likewise Emma Crosby took over the news summaries from Colin Brazier who moved to Afternoon Live to work alongside Kay Burley. Etchingham moved to ITV News to present the relaunched News at Ten with Sir Trevor McDonald and team.^[1]

It should be noted that whilst press releases have suggested that Emma and Colin were to switch places, both have yet to consistently present the summaries in their new slots. There appears to be no set presenter to do the headline segments for this slot at this time.

Dermot does not present on Fridays and the program is just called, Sky Today

[edit] Presenter history

[edit] Morning shift

Dates	Presenter One	Presenter Two	Presenter Three	News Summaries
2002 - October 2005	Martin Stanford	Julie Etchingham
October 2005 - Early 2006	Martin Stanford	Anna Botting	Anna Jones
Early 2006 - July 2006	Martin Stanford	Anna Jones
July 2006 - November 2006	Chris Roberts	Anna Jones
November 2006 - February 2007	Colin Brazier	Anna Jones
February 2007 - October 2007	Martin Stanford	Anna Jones
October 2007 - January 2008	Julie Etchingham			Colin Brazier
8th January 2008 -	Dermot Murnaghan			Emma Crosby

[edit] Afternoon shift

Before 2005 the 1-5pm shift on Sky News was not referred to on air or in any schedule as 'Sky News Today'. It has therefore been omitted from the table.

Dates	Presenter One	Presenter Two	Presenter Three
October 2005 - Early 2006	Mark Longhurst	Steve Dixon	Ginny Buckley
Summer 2006 - September 2006	Mark Longhurst	Ginny Buckley
September 2006 - Late 2006	Mark Longhurst	Julie Etchingham
Late 2006 - October 2007	Colin Brazier	Julie Etchingham

By late Summer 2007, Sky News Today in the afternoon was often only presented by Julie Etchingham, Colin Brazier often covered other areas of programming, becoming the chief relief presenter for Live at 5. This led many to pre-empt the schedule change of October 2007 which left all news single headed.