'Rota' talk on this site

Loose Women has always had a strong following amongst gay men, so the fact it's discussed here just because the membership is largely male doesn't strike me as baffling. As a daily live show it certainly shouldn't be singled out as more weird topic of discussion than say, GMB or This Morning.

Recently there has been much discussion about how Loose Women have introduced/trialled BAME hosts which has spurred the recent discussion in that thread about who is presenting when. It's not a new set or logo but it was still a significant change worth discussing.

That said, I applaud the more strict approach in terms of forum moderation and hope it stops the rot which has been setting in for some time.

God, this thread is like therapy. Let's face it too lockdown probably hasn't helped - we've all got too much time on our hands. Heck, might even help this place is TV Forum wasn't 24/7 and instead gifted us a start up sequence and closedown every day.


One thing I would like to say is about new members. I think many of us old timers groan when some new names join the board, and yes there have been a couple of bads eggs that have been swiftly dealt with this summer, but as much as at times I felt maybe TV Forum should go into lockdown for lockdown it has been nice having some new contributers join this place and I hope they feel similar to how we did when we found TV Forum and similar sites a couple of decades ago.

After what feels like years of rota talk spreading across the site and derailing otherwise interesting discussion, it's really interesting and refreshing to see it effectively disappear overnight. Looking down both The Newsroom and TV Home thread lists, it's quite satisfying to see a number of threads that were generally responsible for a load of old tripe being called out for what they were!

It may have been a while coming, but fair play also to Asa - it's really nice to see this topic discussed fairly and openly.

Also interesting to note that all the rota fans appear to know that they don't have a leg to stand on and so haven't been especially vocal in mounting a defence...

I don't see how Loose Women doesnt belong on a TV forum....Its a daily talk show on TV....This is TV Forum, not News Forum. I can see how the rota talk gets out of hand, but if you don't like it, don't read it. There are people who are genuinely curious as to who is on the show each day...But now we cant talk about the show or even GMB until they have a relaunch? Thats a bit odd...

i mean couldn't they just...watch it?

This. It isn't the 1980s where if you miss a show and didn't tape it, tough luck its gone forever. Today the entire show is on demand on the Hub or the iPlayer, and clips are on YouTube.
You don't need to populate a forum with questions about who was on the show, just drag your backside to ITV Hub and find out for yourself.

Genuinely not trying to be provocative for the sake of it here but having only ever been used to the 'mega-thread' style (I recall the 'Daybreak' thread having three figures of pages when I joined up in 2013), I really don't quite understand what's expected of us any more.

There were some minor changes to GMB this morning in that they began using a different split screen graphic for Piers and Susanna so that, like a few other programmes, they appear to be sitting next to each other despite, in reality, being distanced.

This isn't a massive topic for extended discussion and certainly isn't worthy of a thread in its own right but it's the kind of thing which some people would be interested to know had changed, but there's now nowhere to post this, to the extent that it's been referred to in the This Morning thread since the GMB one has been closed.

Where exactly are we supposed to post these little bits of information which are worth mentioning but certainly not worthy of their own thread if there's no longer a general thread for programmes like Good Morning Britain and Loose Women?

Previously, if you were interested in Loose Women or GMB, you'd go to their dedicated threads to read about them. If you weren't interested in those programmes, you wouldn't read those threads. Surely that's a sensible system as it is? There are a number of threads which I never read, because I don't personally have any interest in that topic/programme, but I understand that others must find this to be interesting and therefore I merely skip over it. I don't understand why people cannot do the same with the two ITV Daytime threads which have been closed.

Now that the GMB and Loose Women threads have been closed down, people who are interested in those shows now find themselves unable to discuss these programmes, and people who aren't interested in them will stumble upon bits and pieces posted in the 'wrong' places, e.g. the talk of GMB's new split screen appearing in the This Morning thread today due to the lack of a dedicated space for this discussion.

I'm struggling to understand (a) how this is supposed to be an improvement, (b) how we're supposed to post these little day-to-day updates post-thread-closures?

Just seems like because a few people were 'boring people' by talking about rotas in a few threads, the many people who enjoyed reading/contributing to those threads generally are being punished, and I'm afraid that doesn't sit right with me at all.

Certainly inconsistency is now a problem.

There is no GMB Thread but there is a This Morning thread which often strays into rota / presenter chat.

You can talk about BBC Breakfast in minute detail but not GMB.

Megathreads are frowned upon, yet we still have megathreads. Like 'ITV Programming', 'Channel 5 Discussion', 'The Sport Thread'

The problem is indeed complex and I don’t believe that there is a solution that will placate everyone.

One possible way to alleviate some of the pressure is to create a “miscellany” thread where small issues can be raised eg lighting changes.

This way the main threads can be freed up and mass scrolling can be eliminated or reduced substantially.

The fact that people want to know who's presented Loose Women but don't seem to be interested in actually watching it just proves the point, really.

The last time Loose Women was properly discussed in that thread was when they got the new set last year or the year before that. Since then it’s just been a discussion of who sits in chair one, chair two or why Karen Hannson sits in chair three but not chair four etc and I don’t find that conversation about the show stimulating.

You're never going to have full consistency, just as we don't over the road with a dedicated morrisons and dedicated non-morrisons thread*

And I think that's fine. But the rota logging has got to stop, it sucks the life from every thread. If you allow rota chat in a Loose Women thread it'll seep into every other one over time. That's where the consistency needs to be.

*Also of course some threads are Official, whereas others are not