Daybreak - the launch onwards

News is tried and tested to not work in the mornings, which is why ITV keep reverting to the TVAM model. At best BBC Breakfast is no more newsy than Five News.

I agree you have to remember that in a very competitive breakfast television market Daybreak and BBC Breakfast have signficantly different demographic profiles in terms of viewers. TV-am and GMTV had a mixed lifestyle and magazine format compared to BBC's straight rolling news. I don't think that approach as suggested above would do anything to boost ratings probably achieve the opposite. It would alienate ITV's core breakfast audience which is still 'housewives' with children. If people want to watch purely rolling news Breakfast can provide that alternative.

In reference to idea of axing Daybreak I think at this stage it wouldn't really make a difference. If you looked at the longer terms ratings decline of GMTV from 2006 onwards, Daybreak is performing roughly where GMTV would have been hadn't it not been axed.

The audience may be stable at 800,000 and where GMTV would be but if the AI figures are low then viewers will have no problem switching over and not coming back. They could literally transplant the Daybreak name for GMTV and keep everything else the same and the AI figures would shoot up, because it pretty much is the same but viewers didn't take well to the initial change and it appears that view has remained.

GMTV also used to collapse during public holidays but not to the extent of Daybreak. The drop was proportionally similar to that of BBC Breakfast. GMTV (including Lorraine) averaged 1m compared to 1.4m for BBC Breakfast, but that gap has widened to roughly 900,000 v 1.6m and Sky News has seen a boost too. Every show needs a level of viewer loyalty, and Daybreak clearly doesn't have that and there are no signs to show anything will improve.

It's a shame because I do quite like Daybreak in its current form but it clearly isn't working.

I don't know where people have got this idea that Breakfast is rolling news.If that were the case, it would have exactly the same running order as the News Channel which it clearly doesn't. BBC Breakfast News in the 90s was, and that didn't work, hence they slowly switched to a more mixed format around 2000ish. It now has a mixture of topics, many family-focused. There are often items about health, education mixed within the news.

Daybreak is too far the other way. People keep saying that Daybreak isn't the BBC and shouldn't try to do news because it's an alternative. I disagree for two reasons: it clearly isn't working if the ratings aren't significantly higher than GMTV in its latter days; secondly, GMTV in its heyday (around the Eamonn and Fiona era when it regularly beat Breakfast in the ratings) was much newsier than Daybreak today. Breakfast didn't gain viewers by changing formats; it gained viewers by GMTV losing them because it became very showbiz and tabloid focused.

How long have ITV1/HD breakbumpers been used during Daybreak? I haven't watched it for a while, but I noticed it this morning.

Does breakfast have "better" figures because it is:
A) on longer (I find myself watching daybreak again on +1 as I don't like the Lorraine programme)
B) it is one programme - breakfast doesn't stop at it's peak to hand over to a different programme.
C) each segment is presented from a different corner of the studio. Viewers like interaction (e.g. Sunrise) if they were all on the sofa and more news regularly and longer including business news.

All in all follow the same format as Sunrise but include breakfast style stories. This would attract more viewers and be of a cross section of the public.

Here here! I agree with pretty much all you said there, especially in your 2nd paragraph! Others should take note :p

Think you can argue both ways.

The BBC revitalised Breakfast - with the introduction of the split 0830-0915 (where there was no requirement to satisfy a News 24/News Channel agenda/audience) and the relaxation AND simplification of the show, with the appointment of warm and engaging presenters. (Contrast Bill and Sian with Dermot and Natasha...) Breakfast has demonstrated that you don't need a flashy studio or star presenters in this genre.

Add to that the huge damage to the GMTV brand caused by the phone scandals (where there were troubles for most broadcasters, but GMTV's were an order of magnitude worse), and a pursuit of a more "Heat magazine" agenda, and it wasn't hugely surprising that the balances tipped in the BBC's favour.

The BBC went from a pretty brown-bread, hard-ish news show (very John Birt), and relaxed it (very Greg Dyke).

GMTV went from a pretty relaxed soft-ish, but still newsy, show to something that was incredibly light-weight, and routinely deceived it's audience and abused their trust (the phone stuff)...

I'd hoped that Daybreak would have been, or evolved into, a UK version of NBC's Today show. It manages to handle news and lighter stuff all under one umbrella

Personally, I say bring back The Big Breakfast. Zig and Zag, your country needs you!!!

They should have gave GMTV one last revamp before axing it and trying Daybreak, using that approach with Penny Smith as leading female. I think she was a huge loss. A further suggestion, but would inevitably impact on other ITV programmes and ITV may not think its worth taking that risk, could be a Today Show style of programme with Phillip Schofield & Julie Etchingham.

Peter Fincham (who commissioned The One Show pilot in Birmingham and the full run from London) clearly wanted to poach Adrian Chiles (ITV had tried a year or two earlier) and had to revitalise ITV's morning output, and there was a short window of opportunity to get Adrian (and then Christine) to jump ship AND get them involved. He couldn't have waited 6 months or a year for that to see if a GMTV reboot was going to work before poaching Adrian - particularly when it was clear that GMTV wasn't working well enough and many thought it was a 'broken brand'.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing though..

He could have poached Adrian & Christine anyway, it didn't necessarily have to be for GMTV (as it was then). They could have even put a One Show clone at 8pm which is currently an awful slot for ITV! Breakfast TV is notoriously difficult to get right no matter how much money you throw at it, and so he must have realised there was the chance Daybreak could bomb. It is a lesson for the future, not to do things on a whim.

(Edit) Speaking of a whim, it looks like ITV may now be dishing out jobs to ex BBC Breakfast staff and want Chris Hollins to force Adrian to quit so they don't have to pay him. Source.