Daybreak - the launch onwards

Yep - and judging by recent-ish interviews with Adrian, he feels the same...

I'm fairly sure if they did they'd be slammed for trying to flog a dead horse.

Hindsight is a fantastic gift.

It wasn't quite a dead horse and definitely not unfixable, it was just in desperate need of an overhaul. It still had an average audience of around 1m and BBC Breakfast was only about 0.4m ahead. The gap is much wider now, with BBC Breakfast often getting double the audience of Daybreak. The reaction to the original announcement of GMTV becoming Daybreak on Twitter and Facebook was extremely negative.

The public demise of GMTV didn't help either, with Adrian & Christine's BBC departures being very high profile and it appeared as though they had stolen the jobs of Ben, Emma etc.

The only thing that would bring Daybreak back from the brink, is calling it GMTV! Not that I prefer GMTV, but a simple revamp wouldn't generate as much publicity as a name change!

Can CrossChannel add any light to this? I have to agree that not only the look but content-wise it is heading more GMTV, but I have to say that even GMTV had more news-content. After Penny did the news, they did cover the top story in more depth.

On Daybreak, two large stories, namely Libya and Japan, are mentioned for about 3/4 minutes every 30 minutes, and that is just inexcuseable. These stories have a great amount to be said about them, and there is great interest in them. The editors of this programme either need to have a good think about what is going to air, or go. I bet you that sports and showbiz news gets more coverage than either of the two news stories. Plus all of the "features" which are just irrelevant at the moment.

Are those figures a fair comparison? I didn't think GMTV was on 1 million viewers when you took Lorraine's programme out of the picture?

I'd have to agree. I know I've mentioned this before, but back when Daybreak launched, the top story at the TOTH was read by Adrian & Christine, and they'd speak to correspondents or introduce a report, even speak to a guest, and then go to Tasmin for 'the rest of the days news'. I think this format was much more sufficient. Currently, we've got Tasmin really in control of ALL news content, while Adrian and Christine seem to talk about the everyday/mundane topics - today 'family week' and foster parents. Yes, its a good talking point, but surely let the shows main anchors conduct some sort of interview which is related to the top story I.E, Libya.

GMTV was very news orientated as it approached the end, if you look at clips on youtube of TOTH and compare them to now, there is a stark difference. Daybreak came along and it suddenly took a backwards step. I still stand by that they should never have axed the newshour format for the first hour either.

The main problem with the news coverage is that Tasmin just doesn't hold the gravitas that Penny and Helen had and news doesn't seem to be given any kind of priority on the show. Last week was solid proof that even as a light entertainment presenter, Christine can handle serious stories effectively so there is no reason why they aren't even doing a little bit of coverage away from the news desk.



Daybreak is still a bit lower than what GMTV was when you take Lorraine out, but the overall reach throughout the entire morning has dropped by about a million. GMTV got 4-5m each day, Daybreak is getting 3-4m. The most worrying thing is that the audience just seems to collapse during school holidays, but with GMTV there was always a proportionate drop with BBC Breakfast.

Content aside for one moment, I'm afraid presentationally, the whole thing is now a mess. Red sofa, purples, yellow, oranges - the old style purple sofas are still in the green room, albeit with a few red scatter cusions.

Initially Daybreak had quite a small colour palette of purple, white and yellow - now it's an explosion of colour. Arguably, purple was a big mistake in the first instance.

What a mess. They should have stuck with the purple sofa. It looked more modern. This red thing looks dated and out of place.

With the spring flower bumpers, and all that, you can now tell this programme is aimed soley at women again.

Daybreak looked fresh when it started with a clean cut look and content actually aimed at men. Now its just GMTV again, what a shame.

When I first saw the news break-bumpers it screamed 70's at me!

Errm falling Ratings?