ITV News is the branding of news programmes on the British news television channel of ITV. ITV has a long tradition of television news. Independent Television News (ITN) was founded to provide news bulletins for the network in 1955, and has since continued to produce all news programmes on ITV. The channel's news coverage has won awards from the Royal Television Society, Emmy Awards and BAFTAs. Between 2004 and 2008, the ITV Evening News held the title of "RTS News Programme of the Year". The flagship ITV News at Ten has won numerous BAFTA awards, and also being named "RTS News Programme of the Year" in 2011, 2015, 2021 and 2022. ITV News has the second-largest television news audience in the United Kingdom, second only to BBC News (and followed by other broadcasters such as Sky News, Channel 4 News and Channel 5 News). However, its £43 million annual news budget is dwarfed by that of the publicly funded BBC, which spends £89.5 million annually on news-gathering, plus a further £23.1 million on its rolling news channel. Initially, all national news programmes on ITV carried ITN's own brand. As the ITV network consolidated from the mid 1990s onwards, ITN branding of news programmes was eventually dropped on 8 March 1999 following the introduction of the ITV News brand. ITN remains the producer of all the national ITV News programmes. History ITN was set up by the Independent Television Authority to provide a new type of news service for the upcoming commercial television service Independent Television (ITV). Both ITN and ITV were launched on 22 September 1955, and the news service immediately broke new ground by introducing in-vision newscasters and reporter packages (incidentally, the first roster of regular ITN newscasters and reporters included marathon runner Christopher Chataway, Robin Day, and Reginald Bosanquet). The unique, probing reporting style of Robin Day caused shock among politicians, finding themselves questioned continually for information – this had never been the case with the BBC. ITN also boasted the first British female newsreader, Barbara Mandell, in 1956. Into the 1960s, reporters such as George Ffitch, Alastair Burnet, Gordon Honeycombe, Huw Thomas and Sandy Gall emerged as aspiring newscasters, under the leadership of editor Geoffrey Cox. The original ITN logo, featuring a large "T" flanked either side by "I" and "N" (all encased within an outlined circle), was used from 1955 up to 1970. The original ITN