Good Morning Britain

It'll be interesting to see if and how the ratings change over the next month when the schools return, and potentially some people stop working from home.

I can't imagine many school kids watch GMB,

Has ITV not thought about putting the News back at 12.30?

Just based on the above alone, the percentages seem comparable until Bargain Hunt and the News makes it go through the roof.

If the Lunchtime News was moved back to 12.30 so they were first before the BBC, ITV could try and retain their existing audience and gain audience share looking for the first news hit of the day.

Loose Women could then move to 1pm and be a more suited lead in to the recorded daytime output. Indeed Loose Women isn’t even on tomorrow so ITV News can start at 12.15 to cover the Budget.

I think we all know it’s camera trickery. What they do though seems to be slightly more complicated that how it’s being explained. How does St Paul’s appear in the faded join when they are on-screen together, but it’s also there on a wide shot? Does the background on the screen change depending on what cameras are being used?

I wouldn’t say it looks ugly just a bit out of place. I wonder why the desk was not designed with screens underneath the glass like the old one.

If they wanted the News at 12.30pm, they would have done it when they did the schedule revamp last year. Loose Women probably makes more money for ITV so it makes sense to have it air after This Morning.

I've always thought this, since they moved the news to 1.30 over a decade ago now. As you say, Bargain Hunt is an absolute behemoth in the daytime schedules, and is seemingly always going to win its slot, so you may as well do the news opposite it. Then you've also got a junction at 1pm where you can start something and try and attract the sizeable audience who doesn't want to watch the news.

Otherwise you've now got the situation where everyone switches over to BBC1 for Bargain Hunt, then when that's finished ITV are in the middle of Loose Women so you may as well stick with the news, and then when the news is finished, ITV are just starting the news, which you've just seen, so you may as well stick with BBC1. It seems to make no sense at all.

And as you suggest, if you move Loose Women to 1pm, you also lose the issue of it coming straight after This Morning and doing very similar things. Indeed that does seem to be a problem with ITV daytime, too many of the programmes seem to merge into one. It was bad enough when you had Jeremy Kyle there, now if anything it's worse as you have Good Morning Britain going into Lorraine going into This Morning going into Loose Women, all of which seem incredibly similar (the fact they're in adjacent studios doesn't help) and (on a day when one of them isn't pre-recorded of course) means they can all be going on about the same topics. I know some people appreciate the liveness and the fact it's part of their routine, but it does become a bit like wallpaper. I know it has a loyal audience, but it doesn't seem interested in attracting any new viewers.

Yes - as Alfie says, the close shot is actually two camera angles/shots joined together. I believe Piers's looks at a camera slightly to his right, and Susanna looks at a camera slightly to her left. It's an impressive result when the two are joined together.

GMB and BBC Breakfast getting 66.5% combined share does suggest the rest of the broadcasters don't rate that well in that timeslot.

I wonder who is in 3rd place at breakfast? C5's kids shows probably? BBC2 is just random repeats & C4 old US sitcoms.

I think its because they don't know what the seating setup will be once they get back to normal.

I preferred it at 12.30pm and it makes sense for the reasons you say - but think it's actually now been at 1.30pm for as long as it was at 12.30pm. It moved between 12.30 and 1.00 up until 1991 where it settled at 12.30pm, then moved to 1.30pm in 2006.

I doubt now they'd want to break the link with the other live daytime shows - in many ways Loose Women is probably seen as a "This Morning Extra" kind of show, debating things which may have been mentioned earlier in the morning in more details and designed with keeping the This Morning audience around.