Obituary: Nigel Ryan

After graduating from Oxford, where he studied modern languages, he worked briefly in advertising before joining Reuters in 1954. Three years later he became a foreign correspondent, serving in Paris, Rome, Algeria, Congo and South Africa.

In colonial Congo he passed on some of his local knowledge to Robin Day, one of the original newscasters on ITN, who then introduced him to its editor, Geoffrey Cox. Ryan joined ITN as a reporter in 1961.

Few men combined sophistication, intelligence and charm to such effect as Ryan, The Times reported. In 1968 he became editor of ITN at the age of 38 and for ten years presided over what was widely considered to be the most innovative and influential television news service in Britain. It was one which not just outpaced its enduring rival, the BBC, but frequently left it floundering, The Times said.

During Ryan’s period as editor - he took on the extra role of ITN chief executive in 1971 - News at Ten’s status as the most important television news programme in the country and a fixed point in British television life was decisively reinforced - and the prestige of ITN with it.

After leaving ITN in 1977, Ryan had brief stints at NBC in New York and later Thames Television in England.

In the early 1980s he made an undercover visit to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan with his friend and colleague Sandy Gall, also a former Reuters journalist. He wrote about it in A Hitch or Two in Afghanistan: A Journey Behind Russian Lines, published in 1983.

Ryan died of a stroke on 17 July in Versailles where he lived. ■