ITV

ITV announces their Climate Action Week

Credit: ITV

The Climate Action Week will take place from November 1st to coincide with the COP26 talks in Glasgow and will be broadcast across regional and network bulletins and digital channels.

ITV News will provide viewers with coverage before during and after the COP26 conference, building on their long-running Earth on the Edge series, which examines the impact of climate change in the UK and internationality.  

The Voice is set to return to ITV in 2022

Credit: ITV

The talent competition will welcome back Anne Marie, Olly Murs, Sir Tom Jones and will.i.am as the formidable coaches. 

Back in their famous spinning chairs, the coaches will be looking for the next singing superstar, with the winner securing a record contract with Universal’s label UMOD. 

Emma Willis will return as the host, as more amateur singers look for fame as the next singing sensation.

ITV commission new Saturday night show from John Bishop

The comedy star is currently on tour with his new stand-up show Right Here Right Now.

Every week for six weeks, Bishop will perform his trademark everyman stand-up and chat to celebrity guests in front of a live studio audience. The interviewees will include some of the biggest names in showbiz and sport.

Bishop will also invite stand-ups from around the world to perform on the show.

The real life of crime

Manhunt: The Night Stalker (Credit: ITV)

True crime docs have long been a TV staple but, argued an RTS panel last month, the genre is undergoing a golden age. “There is an enduring appetite for crime,” said Jo Clinton-Davis, ITV’s controller of popular factual. “Each story is a drama in its own right.”

Helen Tonge, MD of Manchester indie Title Role Productions, which made Crimes That Shook Britain for the Crime+Investigation channel, reckoned that “to feel empathy for the victims or family is inherent to our human nature.

ITV's CEO Carolyn McCall on the channel's digital transition

For ITV, the pandemic forced the company to do some hard thinking. Advertising revenue fell off a cliff in the second quarter of 2020, programme ­budgets were slashed, and senior executives took voluntary pay cuts.

“Commercially, we were very worried about our cash situation in the first three or four months of the pandemic,” CEO Carolyn McCall told her interviewer, BBC News’s Dharshini David. “We took some dramatically difficult decisions in the first three weeks of the pandemic because we had to preserve our cash.”

This Disunited Kingdom | RTS Cambridge Convention 2021

In a year of a Labour Wales, Tory England and SNP Scotland, what does Britishness mean now and in the future? And how can, and should, the British media react? The PSBs are rapidly spreading production round the country. What does this mean for the industry? Is it too late to save UK plc? Top pollster and TV pundit Professor Sir John Curtice puts a series of scenarios to a panel of industry leaders to explore their views of Britishness and the fragmenting media landscape.

Chair

Kirsty Wark, Journalist and Writer

Speakers

will.i.am, Ashley Banjo and Charlene White to headline ITV’s Black History Month programming

There will also be a new brand campaign and curated collections on ITV Hub and BritBox.

Commissioning Editor Satmohan Panesar said: “Building on last year's celebrations, Black History Month returns to ITV this October.

“Featuring a range of engaging documentaries from some of our highest profile talent; through their personal stories, the films will explore what it means to be black in Britain today.”

Aidan Turner to star in new ITV thriller The Suspect

(credit: ITV)

Adapted by Peter Berry (Gangs of London) from Michael Robotham’s novel of the same name, Turner will star as Dr. Joseph O’Loughlin, a man who appears to have a perfect life with his devoted wife, loving daughter, a successful practice as a clinical psychologist and a new publishing deal. With a burgeoning media profile, the doctor even became a hero online after rescuing a young patient from jumping from the tenth floor of the hospital.