BBC economics editor to become political editor at commercial broadcaster and host Sunday morning politics programme to rival The Andrew Marr Show

Robert Peston is to move to ITV to become political editor and the host of a new Sunday morning talk show.

The departure of the BBC’s economics editor comes as a blow to the corporation, which fought to keep him with the offer of presenting a revamped Newsnight on Thursday nights.

The audience for BBC2’s flagship news programme, fronted by Evan Davis for a year, has fallen 3% year on year over the past 10 months in part due to an extended regional news. Newsnight faces greater competition for its core audience on a Thursday during Question Time, hence the bid to appoint Peston.

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However Peston, who had been with the BBC for 10 years, was finally tempted to accept the ITV offer late on Friday night when channel bosses offered an eponymous weekly political slot to compete against The Andrew Marr Show. Friends of the loquacious Peston said he regarded it as a dream job.

It is also understood he will be be working on a significant amount of digital media content for ITV, with a continuation of his blog and online video interviews.

The decision to move to ITV will be welcomed by a channel expected to be hit hard by the departure of the host nation from the Rugby World Cup. ITV paid £60m for the broadcasting rights for the 2011 and 2015 World Cups but ratings are expected to fall after England exited the tournament following the defeat by Australia on Saturday.



However, it will be seen as a blow to the BBC, as the economics editor is one of its best known personalities with strong support from senior management.

The corporation had offered Peston a job presenting a new version of Newsnight every Thursday. James Harding, the BBC’s head of news, also tried to keep his former FT colleague at the BBC by helping to negotiate the Newsnight deal as well as offering more documentary work.

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ITV’s director of television, Peter Fincham, and editor of ITV News, Geoff Hill, negotiated the successful deal for the commercial channel, which once ruled the Sunday morning political slot with Brian Walden’s show and is looking for a way to regain the upper hand.

Peston joined the BBC as business editor in 2005 and is best known for breaking a string of exclusives in that role, starting with the Northern Rock affair. He was appointed economics editor in October 2013, but has a varied role at the corporation, recently presenting an interview show with Eddie Mair on Radio 4 and fronting several documentaries.

Earlier this year in an interview with the Radio Times, which first reported the job offer on Monday, Peston said he was looking for “another big challenge”.

He said: “I mean, I love the BBC. I genuinely don’t know … I mean, going from print journalism to the BBC was a big change, and I sort of feel that I wouldn’t mind another big change, but I haven’t the faintest idea what it would be.”

Peston was understood not to have applied for the job of BBC political editor, which Laura Kuenssberg was promoted to this summer.

When Peston joined the BBC, his drawn-out onscreen delivery was widely mocked. Yet he became one of the corporations best-known presenters once the financial crisis hit.

His public deliberations over whether to move to ITV caused some irritation among existing BBC presenters. Some prepared a spoof of their colleague, who is now almost as well-known for his hair length and tie as his prowess in getting the stories.

On Friday, veteran broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby, the news anchor Huw Edwards and Nicholas Parsons, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute, made a spoof appeal on Radio 4 to the economics editor – offering him their own jobs if he turns down an offer to become ITV’s political editor.

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“This is a very serious situation,” said Dimbleby on BBC Radio 4’s PM, the news programme presented by Mair – whose tongue-in-cheek feud with Peston has become a familiar fixture to his listeners.



Mair told listeners of his distress at the thought of Peston leaving the BBC, saying with a deadpan delivery, that it “makes me want to cry my eyes out … literally”.

He added: “I want to publicly offer, right now, to stand aside as presenter of PM and offer my job to Robert as part of his clearly burgeoning portfolio of programmes and, what’s more, as money might be a factor too, I’m also willing to sell one of my kidneys … if it helps increase the money that the BBC can afford to offer.”

• This article was amended on 5 October 2015. We said the audience of Newsnight had declined by 5% over the past year. To clarify: this figure did not include viewers of the programme in Scotland. Taking into account all viewers the audience has fallen by 3% over the period