Sir David Nicholas TV pioneer
SIR DAVID Nicholas, who has died at 92, was the long-time former editor-in-chief and later chief executive of Independent Television News, which he joined in ITV’s infancy.
He spent more than 30 years at the company, helping to build it into the leading producer of TV bulletins at a time when the BBC’s news department was a relative backwater. One of the great innovators of early TV, he was heavily influenced by American newscasts, especially when launching News at Ten, with its then innovative use of two presenters instead of one.
Sir David, inset, organised coverage of historic moments, including the Apollo moon landings, Falklands War and the conflict in Afghanistan, as well as UK and US elections.
Born in Glynneath, South Wales, he went to Neath Grammar and then the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, where he obtained an honours degree in English. Friends at university reportedly thought he was a “bit odd” for wanting to be a journalist but he took a job on The Yorkshire Post before arriving at ITN in 1960 – its fifth anniversary on air – by way of the Daily Telegraph and The Observer. “I was in the ITN newsroom for 31 years and there were many, many occasions when we handled great stories really well but there were only two stories that changed the world,” he said, citing the Cuban missile crisis and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. He was concerned as much with the presentation of the news as with the stories themselves.
ITN had, from its inception, placed journalists such as Robin Day front and centre, creating a generation of newscasters who could inject personality into what they were reading, without compromising objectivity.
The BBC, in contrast, had avoided using in-vision presenters at all for as long as possible – and when it succumbed to the inevitabilities of a visual medium, retained the services of announcers rather than reporters.
The differences were never more evident than on election nights, when ITN paid reporters in the field to send the results from their constituencies before they told the BBC.
The figures were displayed on screen with some of the first graphical computer representations, while the BBC stuck with its clock hand, which it called its Swingometer.
Sir David became ITN’s editor and chief executive in 1977, having been passed over a decade earlier, and one of his first coups was to recruit
Anna Ford as ITV’s first female newscaster.
He also presided over the migration from film to videotape for newsgathering.
He was awarded the CBE in 1982 and knighted in 1989. He retired as chairman of ITN in 1991.
He married his childhood sweetheart Juliet in August 1952 at Ystradfellte Church in the Brecon Beacons National Park.
Juliet died in 2013 and he is survived by his daughter Helen, son James and three grandchildren.