Steph's Packed Lunch

It's perhaps worth pointing out that Richard and Judy, while it became a success in the end, also got off to an incredibly shaky start, the ratings weren't very good, the editor left very abruptly and I remember them taking it off for three weeks to show Celebrity Big Brother's Little Brother and everyone saying that was the end of it. It took a good year for it to really find its feet, it was always referred to as "the troubled show" for a long time.

It's remarkable how quickly C4 lost the initiative in daytime, though, because circa 2006 they were miles ahead of everyone and there was that Radio Times cover with Richard and Judy, Paul O'Grady, Noel, Des Lynam and Carol Vorderman, and that was a massively successful line-up. You can say that they started to struggle when BBC1 and ITV stopped doing kids shows, but ITV had already pretty much given up kids shows by then, and C4 were still thrashing them for a good few years after that, and there was no reason why C4 couldn't keep the initiative. I think the decline had already started long before BBC1 stopped showing kids' shows.

It's interesting how 5pm used to be the big battleground with Paul O'Grady and Richard and Judy, and now the two quizzes are the big shows there and all the topical and live stuff is now earlier in the day. Maybe it would be a better idea to try 5pm again as an alternative for those who don't want quizzes. I know they pull in big audiences, but so do Bargain Hunt, the One O'Clock News and Doctors (in terms of share, probably bigger) which is what they're up against now, and it would at least be long enough away from This Morning to not look like you're just doing what they've just done.

And all paper reviews are a waste of time, but doing one well into the afternoon is even more pointless.

It truly is a “what’s the point?” commission, fuelled by vanity and self-serving politics rather than any attempt to serve the audience.

I can’t recall anything with the odds so stacked against itself since the London Live launch.

Good grief the ratings for this are dire - if it drops under 50k I believe it technically gets rounded to zero viewers by BARB.

As I said a little while ago, ITV Daytime have this share of the market sewn up. The features on the show for the last two days don’t differ at all from ITV’s offerings.

I genuinely don’t think a business based current affairs format would do worse than how the show is currently performing. Maybe something like a business orientated version of Morning Joe? The studio itself almost looks like a conference room, and would actually lend itself to this kind of format.

I am reminded of the film "They shoot horses don't they?".

Some of the content is also certainly far from 'hot off the press' such as the boy phoning 112 to save his mum, which was all over social media and the news...in August!

https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/health/2020/08/26/hero-josh-saves-his-mum-by-calling-number-on-the-side-of-his-toy-ambulance/

...They even copied his 'surprise' of meeting the police!

This is the problem of TV companies employing talent and then trying to create a format for them. It should be the other way round.

There are already sufficient examples of where this strategy has failed in the past for both parties.

Bring back 'Stop, Look, Listen'. And 'How We Used To Live' - guaranteed ratings winners from ITV Schools on Channel 4.

It is a shame viewers have dropped dramatically since the show began. Have not seen it yet so can't comment on the content.

Were they not originally going to have a guest co-host each week?

Sidekick Simon ?

Perhaps controversially, I'm enjoying it. Lively, easy viewing - and I really like the studio, which is much more impressive than I was expecting.

It looks like a disused city centre restuarant/bar, where they haven't even bothered to fully remove the previous branding.

It was said the other day that the studio was previously a bar, mentioned when Steph was talking to the ‘lunch mates’ some of which used to go to the bar.