ITN
News
News Production:
ITN
ITN Production Challenges
ITN (Independent Television News) is one of the UK’s leading production companies, best known for delivering high-quality news on major broadcasters like ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5. In their central newsroom studio, the ITN team wanted to rethink how their ITV news studio could be upgraded to be faster and less dependent on large crews or external support.
They were looking to avoid a vendor lock-in, where every integration would require a vendor to come in and set it up. Instead, ITN now builds its own automations that fit its control room needs.
In this interview, Lee Sanders, Technical Director at ITN, walks us through their journey with the Cuez platform and how it transformed their production process.
"We wanted a much more flexible, agile, automated way of working, where we could have fewer crew operating the same amount of kit. Cuez and Automator were perfect for the studio."
The Cuez Solution for a News Studio
With Cuez Rundown and Cuez Automator, ITN created a gallery where the setup is fully customised to allow for extended studio control — from scripting to playout. Producers are now able to use no-code automations to create reusable setups and modify them for new formats or branding in a few clicks.
”We made some things feel more traditional, like our old-school iNews galleries. The great thing that keys was able to give us was a running order system that looked completely different, felt a bit different, but felt modern and easy,” says Lee.
With only two people in the studio, ITN is able to run complex shows thanks to the automation built with Cuez. From video playout to audio and vision mixing, the entire production runs with minimal intervention.
“Using Automator and the clever automations we built, our small studio team can output shows in a semi-automated way,” explains Lee.
Not only was Cuez easily customizable, but its modern interface also made it easy for both experienced and new staff to start using it right away. Its drag-and-drop, spreadsheet-like design felt familiar and intuitive.
That allowed Lee and his team to recreate traditional rundown elements to maintain familiarity while upgrading the experience to a more flexible, browser-based environment.
Real Impact at Channel 4
At Channel 4 News, also produced by ITN, Cuez plays a critical role in disaster recovery and cloud production setups. Paired with GV AMPP and SPX graphics, Cuez helped the team stay on air and adaptable, even in high-pressure situations.
“If we need to fall over to a disaster recovery situation, then we use Cuez to create in a cloud environment with GV AMPP, SPX graphics. For each of our five graphics, we’re using Cuez automation,” says Martin Collet, Senior Program Director, Channel 4 News.
Martin also highlighted how easy it was to get started with Cuez, even building automations himself without prior technical expertise.
"I can program Automator. I can build automations myself. It’s very visual. It doesn’t really require any specialist knowledge... And now people are saying, ‘Why aren’t we using this all the time?’"
A New Era of Live News
Cuez gave ITN a production setup that’s fast, flexible, and self-managed. Whether it’s adjusting to a new brand, onboarding new staff, or building complex visual sequences, the team can do it all in-house, quickly and confidently.
“There is one button push to move to the next item. It rolls, mixes things on the screen for you. I think Cuez is a fantastic product for really agile, fast-paced environments. Anything that requires lots of flexibility and integration with lots of bits of kit—it’s probably the best automation tool I’ve ever seen,” adds Lee.
Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.
