Sir Trevor McDonald presents the News at Ten Thirty

The bulletins replace the News at Ten, which in recent years had been shifted around to accommodate films and other high-profile programmes.

The agenda for the slot, hosted by Sir Trevor McDonald, leans towards a more "upmarket", older male audience.

The move also stops the bulletin from being in direct competition with the BBC's 10 O'Clock News.

ITV News editor-in-chief David Mannion told BBC Breakfast: "The 10 o'clock news worked for us for many, many years until it was abandoned by ITV in favour of, what I think the BBC first christened 'the News at When', and that was a problem for us.

"If viewers do not know where a programme is they are hardly likely to migrate to it, so we are very happy that we have now got a fixed time slot at 10.30 Monday to Friday."

Reinstate

In deciding where to place a regular nightly bulletin ITV first planned to move it 9pm, before deciding on a later slot.

In 1999, it moved the news to 11pm but was told to reinstate it to 10pm by the Independent Television Commission because it was attracting too few viewers.

During that time the BBC had moved its main nightly news to 10pm, so the networks were in direct competition with each other.

On Monday, shares in the new ITV plc group started trading on the London Stock Exchange following the �4.5bn merger between Carlton and Granada.

Granada and Carlton said the merger would create one of the leading broadcasters in Europe, with more investment in programmes, greater efficiency and lower costs.

But savings up of to �100m are to be made, with redundancies expected.