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ITV announces that 'Peston on Sunday' will be moving to a midweek slot

ITV announced that its flagship political discussion programme, 'Peston on Sunday,' will be moving to a new midweek slot on Wednesday

'Peston on Sunday,' which has been the flagship political discussion programme on ITV since 2016, will be moved to a midweek slot from its current Sunday morning one, confirmed the network. It will also be renamed as 'Peston' and now be airing after its flagship evening news programme 'News at Ten,' which has aired since 1967.

Hosted by journalist, presenter and the network's political editor Robert Peston, the show's post-news repeat has boosted ITV's ratings and quickly become the programme's most popular transmission, explaining this decision to shift it to a new slot.

Peston addressed the change to the timings himself. "I could not be more pleased and excited that Peston on Sunday is moving to a Wednesday night slot, under the shortened name of Peston," and pointed out to how viewers numbers were better in midweek. 

"It has always struck me as significant that PoS typically has double or more viewers for its 10.15 pm repeat than for its live broadcast at 10 am," he said. "So, I wanted to explore a possible move to the first transmission in the evening, and it then seemed natural to change the broadcast day to Wednesday — because this is often the biggest political day of the week, and includes Prime Ministers' Questions," he added.

Peston also spoke glowingly of the show: "I am immensely proud of what we have created at Peston on Sunday. Peston, in its new slot, will retain its blend of agenda-setting interviews, digital interaction with the audience, cutting-edge graphical analysis, informality, and fun, with some exciting new elements."

"At the new Peston we aim to be at the heart of the national debate, but never pompously or boringly," he said.

He continued: "There is no more important time to be challenging our leaders and influencers on the issues that matter to ITV's viewers — with the UK facing the most momentous political choices for a generation, on Brexit, on how to fund and run vital public services, on how to solve the housing crisis, on how to end the record-breaking stagnation of living standards."

ITV's Director of News and Current Affairs Michael Jeremy also talked about the most recent change and said: "Robert and the team have done a great job in creating what we believe is the most engaging and interesting political interview programme on television."

"We look forward to 'Peston', in its new slot, providing viewers with great political conversation and analysis on what is often the most interesting political day of the week," he added.

'Peston' will return in its new Wednesday night slot this Autumn and is produced by Shiver and ITV Studios Factual label. Vicky Flind is the Series Editor, while the executive producers are Mark Rubens for Shiver and Geoff Hill for ITN/ITV News.