That's your slot!

THERE'S a feeling around the newsrooms of the land today that York University old boy Greg Dyke has landed a sucker punch on TV bosses at ITN by deciding to switch the Beeb's flagship news programme from 9pm to 10pm.

If so, it's a punch he badly needed to hit home after the fiasco of losing the right to screen Premiership football highlights - along with what seems like just about every other sports broadcasting right - to commercial TV.

The way senior journalists at the Beeb are playing it, ITN were foolish to give up their flagship 10pm bulletin last year - and Dyke, the BBC's new Director General, was more than willing to step into the gap they had so invitingly opened for him.

Speaking to a national newspaper last night John Humphrys, formidable presenter of Radio 4's Today programme and the first journalist to anchor the Beeb's Nine O'Clock News after years when it was fronted by actors and professional presenters, said: "ITN were mugs for giving up on News at Ten and I don't think they will ever recover from that.

"They made a lot of grandiose claims abut the programmes that would replace it, and they just didn't deliver the goods."

Sir David Nicholas, a former editor of News at ten, who campaigned for its restoiration, said: "It is a devastating blow to broadcast journalism in ITV. They lost their advantage when they scrapped News at Ten and the BBC is exposing this huge strategic blunder."

Mr Dyke will flesh out his plans for the BBC's future in his keynote McTaggart lecture at the start of the Edinburgh International Television Festival tonight.

Those plans include switching the flagship evening news programme from 9pm to 10pm - as well as unveiling a seven channel digital TV plan.

The Nine O'Clock News is one of the BBC's oldest and best-loved fixtures. It was launched on September 14, 1970 with presenters Robert Dougall, Richard Baker and Kenneth Kendall.

Angela Rippon became the first female face of TV news in 1976 and other presenters have included Sue Lawley, Julia Somerville, John Humphrys and Michael Buerk.

So what does the BBC stand to gain from shifting this familiar friend from the slot it has occupied for 30 years - apart, that is, from leaving ITN with egg on its face?

BBC insiders say the last thing the corporation wants to do is go down the ITV route - and see viewing figures for the flagship news programme slump in the wake of the move.

"They got rid of News at Ten and found they hadn't enough good quality programmes stockpiled to take its place.

"Audiences went down and there was a terrible fallout with politicians and the Independent Television Commission."

Instead, the BBC apparently plans to tackle the change slowly, to prevent any collapse in the ratings. Precisely what that means, we will presumably find out in Mr Dyke's speech tonight.

The real benefit of the 10pm slot, according to Nine O'Clock News presenter Peter Sissons, is that it gives journalists an extra hour to work on key stories, get all the latest sports results, catch up on news from across the Atlantic and cover 10pm votes in the Commons. "10pm is simply a very, very good time for news in this country," he said.

If it is that good a slot for a prime-time news bulletin, you might find yourself thinking, why did ITN ever give it up?

For commercial considerations, of course.

ITV bosses themselves admitted that when they gave up News at Ten in spring last year in favour of a 6.30pm slot and a second nightly bulletin at 11pm, viewing figures for the news bulletins fell.

That didn't matter as far as they were concerned, though: because while viewing figures for the news bulletin fell, total viewing figures, including those for the newly-vacated 10pm slot which could now be used for uninterrupted films and dramas, were up - generating an extra £100 million in advertising revenue.

The decision, though, came under frequent fire from top politicians and veteran journalists for sidelining the news: so much so that in July this year the Independent Television Commission ordered ITV to reschedule its late night bulletin.

ITV announced it would launch a legal bid to fight the ruling - but just where today's BBC bombshell leaves matters is anyone's guess.

Some ITV bosses appeared to be putting a brave face on things today: insisting the BBC move was good news for ITV in it's battle to keep the news at 11pm.

One source said: "It defeats the ITC's argument that we should move our news bulletin back to 10pm if that would mean it would overlap with the BBC's new 10pm programme.

"That would not be in anybody's interest because we would all be fighting for the same news audience."

So instead of the dark destroyer, perhaps ITV bosses are secretly seeing Greg Dyke as the white knight riding to their rescue after all.

PICTURE: Trevor McDonald was the anchorman of ITV's familiar 'boing, boing, boing'... News at Ten