If they were that short on time why didn’t they just say “Here’s the competition”, the VT talks over the prizes anyway. By the sounds of it they had a performance that must run to a specific time, unlike an interview.
I assume TM didn’t know how much longer the Loose Women promo was going to run for, and Phil had someone shouting in his ear. It took as long to apologise and cut Ruth off as it would have done to let her finish, but they obviously didn’t know that. It does look a bit messy and unprofessional the way it was done - and as others have said, Phil could have shortened his own own throw to the competition feature if they had to hit that, or something else, bang on time.