Every bit of info I see about this just reaffirms my belief it deserves to fail - it's a horrible hybrid of the cosy jumpers of TVam and the patronising cheese of GMTV, the two things Daybreak was supposed to get away from.
Just checking: you've not seen a frame of the programme transmitted yet, right?
Just checking another thing: if you
really want it
to fail, it'll be rubbish to you whatever happens, right?
I have to agree here. It's rather unfair to judge the programme on the basis of a few press shots and a trailer here or there. Why does it deserve to fail? Because they're attempting to go back to a successful formula? It wasn't perfect, we all know that... but it was enough to keep them in the top spot for years until the competition scandal came up. Daybreak tried going original and look where it got them.
I'm not a Daybreak fan in the slightest - in fact I haven't watched it properly since the original launch - but I'll be tuning in on Monday with an open mind to see what they have to offer. If it's too sickly or downmarket for my tastes, I'll not be tuning in too often. If it manages to replicate GMTV at the height of its success, I'll probably stick with them. The only thing they have to do to please me is ditch the gimmicks, tone down the competitions (for their reputation if anything!) and inject some news into the mix.
What's going to wreck the endeavour for me (and I'm sticking my neck out on this, but I believe its inevitable) - COMPETITIONS.
All you hear from ITV is "here's your chance to win...", "coming up we'll be telling you about your chance to win...", and "here's [some soap actor] to tell you about your chance to win...".
And its not even as if its £50,000 or even £25,000 in cash or prizes - its usually much, much less and the same competition will run for a week or even two. When you consider they probably raise £15,000 a day in telephone calls, you begin to see how much of their business model revolves around creaming the viewers.
If the programme was better, they'd command greater revenues for the commercial spots and the wouldn't need to supplement with competitions. But by teasing the same comp again and again throughout the programme every day I simply won't watch, and they end up with crap viewing figures and have to make up the shortfall somewhere.
Totally vicious circle. It would take a gutsy editor to tell ITV that they want to push away from telephone revenues, and I suspect it would fall on deaf ears anyway.
My window for viewing is *so* narrow in the morning I just switch over the second a competition comes on.
It's a crutch ITV needs to learn to stop using, or they will never succeed; especially in the breakfast slot where they were so damaged by the phone-in scandals at GMTV.
What's going to wreck the endeavour for me (and I'm sticking my neck out on this, but I believe its inevitable) - COMPETITIONS.
All you hear from ITV is "here's your chance to win...", "coming up we'll be telling you about your chance to win...", and "here's [some soap actor] to tell you about your chance to win...".
And its not even as if its £50,000 or even £25,000 in cash or prizes - its usually much, much less and the same competition will run for a week or even two. When you consider they probably raise £15,000 a day in telephone calls, you begin to see how much of their business model revolves around creaming the viewers.
If the programme was better, they'd command greater revenues for the commercial spots and the wouldn't need to supplement with competitions. But by teasing the same comp again and again throughout the programme every day I simply won't watch, and they end up with crap viewing figures and have to make up the shortfall somewhere.
Totally vicious circle. It would take a gutsy editor to tell ITV that they want to push away from telephone revenues, and I suspect it would fall on deaf ears anyway.
My window for viewing is *so* narrow in the morning I just switch over the second a competition comes on.
It's a crutch ITV needs to learn to stop using, or they will never succeed; especially in the breakfast slot where they were so damaged by the phone-in scandals at GMTV.
Competitions are everywhere on ITV1. On a daily basis you see competitions on Daybreak, Lorraine, not sure if Jeremy Kyle has one?, This Morning does, let's do lunch/ Loose Women, then Dickinson Real deal, 60mm Makeover, Secret Dealer, the gameshows! Everyone has one! It annoys me to watch programmes that I like due to the constant comptitions!
It's the competitions being promoted at every opportunity which really makes them intrusive - at least twice within an hour show and seemingly every 10 minutes during This Morning.
I just can't help but thinking though this revamp isn't the solution to their problems, and with the news of the big ITV revamp around the corner it might have been wise to admit defeat on Daybreak and let it struggle on to the end of the year before replacing it completely.
Agree with what Gavin said. I can just about stomach a single competition in a hour long programme, but breakfast TV is watched in short bursts. If every time you switch on you see Suzi Perry or Jenny Powell encouraging you to enter a competition for a camper van with an intelligence insulting question you're not going to stick around.
Lorraine had this to say about the show in today's Daily Mail magazine :
Like her bosses at ITV, Lorraine admits the problems with Adrian and Christine’s Daybreak extended beyond the pre-launch hype. ‘At the end of the day you’ve got to have the content – and the content wasn’t right,’ she says. ‘But the hype didn’t help either. I shy away from that and so does Aled. I can’t imagine anything worse than a billboard with our faces on it. We don’t go to premieres and things like that. Unless it’s Star Trek and then I’m there!’
Does she believe the Daybreak brand has been damaged, as some critics suggest? ‘No, I’m not particularly concerned about that. I think the public just think of it as breakfast TV. But Aled and I will be hands-on,’ she insists. ‘We won’t be coming in, doing the show, then going home. I’m absolutely passionate about breakfast television. It’s worked before and it can work again.’
The formula for the new Daybreak is simple. ‘It’s about making sure we cover news stories properly, have really good guests and have some fun,’ Lorraine says. ‘I mean, we need a laugh these days, don’t we?’ Human interest stories will become a bigger part of the show.
‘When Daybreak started that didn’t happen, but to me they’re the heart and soul of the show. Don’t get me wrong, it’s lovely to talk to Will Smith and George Clooney. But the stories that stay with me are the ordinary people who have overcome terrible trauma.’
