Sir David Nicholas, who has died aged 92, played a key role in establishing Independent Television News (ITN) as a serious rival to the BBC, combining dramatic coverage of great events with human stories that made them comprehensible to the widest possible audience.
He produced the first ever News at Ten, went on to become its editor, then ITN’s editor-in-chief, its chief executive and its chairman. He enshrined the doctrine of the four “e”s – exclusivity, enthusiasm, excitement and enterprise – that came to define ITN as one of the world’s leading journalistic brands. “At the sight of a story,” one of his journalists recalled, “David’s eyes lit up. He absolutely loved the news business.”
David Nicholas became known for making the impossible happen, not least as editor of News at Ten between 1977 and 1989, when he proved himself to be both energetic and tenacious. In 1982 he led a battle with the Ministry of Defence to tell the truth about what was happening in the Falklands war. Having scrambled a news crew to join the task force bound for the South Atlantic, Nicholas was frustrated that official reluctance to allow access to a satellite feed was delaying ITN footage of unfolding events.
A brilliant and instinctive editor, he could spot talent in front of and behind the camera, and was responsible for much of ITN’s success in handling big news events. In 1967 he clinched exclusive live coverage of Francis Chichester’s completion of his single-handed voyage round the world, hiring a Dutch coaster to carry the ITN film crew and loading it with 300 tons of gravel as ballast, the strangest item to appear on his expense sheet.
In 1978 he headed an elaborate operation to rescue the correspondent Michael Nicholson and his camera crew after 110 days trekking on foot for 1,500 miles through the Angolan bush with the rebel forces of Dr Jonas Savimbi.
The following year he sacked ITN’s long-serving newsreader Reginald Bosanquet, and later oversaw the company’s move to more spacious new headquarters and the launch of ITN’s “superchannel” of world news, the first television bulletin broadcast from London across Europe.
Nicholas became known for his enthusiasm for new technology, and ITN was the first news organisation in the world to have a mobile satellite dish, allowing reporters to beam their reports live straight back to the studio.
He was quick to develop the potential of computer graphics, which could help viewers to understand complex scenarios – such as the distribution of forces on a battlefield – far better than words. “We can describe things with absolute lucidity and in a short time,” he said. “The papers can’t follow us. Our graphics move and are in colour.”
One key to Nicholas’s success, and to his longevity, was that he never forgot his early days as a cub reporter on a local paper in Wakefield, where he kept his readers happy with no fewer than eight columns a week charting the fortunes of Wakefield Trinity rugby league team.
Whenever the genial Welshman felt depressed about budgetary niggles from the ITV companies which owned ITN, he gave thanks for deliverance from this early chore. Yet he also recognised the value of “human interest” stories – the News at Ten “… And Finally” reports – which would resonate in the back yards of Wakefield as loudly as in the leafy stockbroker belt.
The son of a bank cashier, David Nicholas was born in Tregaron, Cardiganshire (now Ceredigion), on January 25 1930, and brought up in the small town of Glynneath in South Wales.
“My father was a radio nut,” he recalled, “and my job was to go down every Wednesday and bring back the wet battery for the radio when it had been charged up.”
David attended Neath Grammar School and the University College of Wales at Aberwystwyth (now part of University of Wales), graduating in English before doing National Service in the Army.
His period with the local paper in Wakefield was followed by stints as a sub-editor on The Yorkshire Post and The Daily Telegraph. He was persuaded to switch to television after subbing Telegraph reports about trade union corruption which made little impact until the BBC’s Panorama took up the story.
He joined ITN in 1960 as a scriptwriter and before long his energy and nose for a good story brought promotion – to deputy editor (1963-77), then editor and chief executive (1977-89).
When News at Ten began as a 12-week trial on July 3 1967, Nicholas reasoned that it could not do much harm in the summer. It made an impact from the beginning, helping to make Vietnam the first television war, and broadcasting the first pictures of the Biafran famine. It stayed on screen for more than 30 years, achieving viewing numbers of 14 million during the 1980s, dwarfing the BBC audience.
Looking for something new to pep up ITN’s election coverage, he spotted a computer program designed to display knitting patterns, and saw its potential. Not long afterwards, Peter Snow was to be seen on the nation’s television screens reporting the election as computer graphics behind him tracked the incoming results in ribbons of colour.
Nicholas encouraged his reporters to think of their stories not merely as scripts, but as packages. These might comprise video footage, graphics, maps, music and other sound effects, pieces to camera and commentary tracks – all moulded together in the field or by editors at ITN’s London base.
The choice of stories on News at Ten, he once said, could equally be made by anyone who had wandered in off the street: “The choices would reflect most ordinary people’s views given the time restraints. Where professionalism comes in is in packaging it.”
Where circumstances merited he was quick to step outside the boundaries of the half-hour news time slot. For an ITN Special about the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, he hired Trafalgar Square for a party and recruited figures such as David Frost to the line-up of studio presenters.
Where the BBC’s coverage focused on the scientific achievement, ITN’s coverage was not just news, but a celebration of a milestone in human history. In the BBC’s own weekly magazine The Listener, the journalist William Hardcastle discerned a significant moment. “In the past,” he observed, “the BBC has tended to excel in the handling of such material, partly through experience and partly through the national cohesion of its network. It was therefore quite striking to see how ITV rather than the BBC rose to the event.”
Nicholas became chairman of ITN in 1989, at a time when the ITV companies were looking for economies. Even his most ardent admirers noted that he was not the man to preside over a period of stringency. He lacked the appetite, as one colleague put it, “to tickle up the suits”. A hole in ITN’s accounts brought matters to a head, necessitating major lay-offs, and in 1991 he retired as chairman, after two years.
Nicholas was a firm advocate of 24-hour news, arguing that it would keep politicians under closer scrutiny. Subsequently he served as consulting editor of Associated Newspaper’s 24-hour TV news station Channel One, as a director of Worldwide TV News and a non-executive director of Channel Four.
Nicholas, who enjoyed walking and sailing in his spare time, was appointed CBE in 1982 and knighted in 1989. In 1991 he was given the Royal Television Society’s Judges Award and in 2001 was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the News World global news forum in Barcelona.
He married, in 1952, Juliet Davies, whom he had first met at a birthday party when they were both eight; later they would sit together on the school bus to Neath.
She died in 2013 and David Nicholas is survived by their son and daughter.
Sir David Nicholas, born January 25 1930, died June 6 2022
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