I have it on good authority that meetings have been taking place all day regarding the new ITV Breakfast Show launching in September. So we have 11-12 weeks of GMTV left as we know it.
At the end of the day, whatever these press reports say IMO I think it's likely that Christine will be joining Adrian come September.
1 - She's sacked her agent and is reported to be going to James Grant Management( i.e. who have Ant & Dec, Phillip Schofield etc on their books)
2- Whatever the press say, I think she has a genuine friendship with Adrian and would most likely want to work with him.
3 - Peter Fincham ( i.e. the former Controller of BBC One,who was responsible for commisioning The One Show) who is now the Director of Television for ITV and will no doubt have a good relationship with Bleakley.
4 - The money - her current salery is reported to be £100,000(ish) a year. Put it this way, over the reported 4 year deal, she'd get either £400,000 or £6m ( 15 times as much!) The BBC could never match ITV's reported £1.5m a year salery. Even if they BBC tripled it, ITV'S offer would still be 5x as much!
Is that definitely going to be the name then?
Think I prefer ITV Day.
I wonder what the situation with Christine is? The Daily Mail is reporting that she is 'close' to signing the £2m BBC deal. I still have a feeling ITV might pull her round though.
Last edited by Joshua on 8 June 2010 9:32am - 2 times in total
I have no idea what Christine is likely to do (neither do any of you, no matter what you all "feel") - but one wonders if its smart to reduce her audience reach by several million viewers when she's entering the zenith of her career.
Being a household name from BBC1 early evening is not the same as being a household name for GMTV.
Adrian leaving doesn't appear to have dented the One Show, does it?
Will it actually reduce her audience reach though - although GMTV's average audience is much smaller than The One Show, I suspect those tuning in at some point during the show is probably on a par.
I know a decade or so ago when breakfast ratings were regularly reported there were two figures ratings were judged on. One was around the 0.5-1.5m mark and was the average audience for the entire show, whilst the second was around 5-10m and I guess the total audience for the show (everyone who tuned in for a minimum period of time).
I think the ratings have to be put into context. Breakfast TV ratings are bound to be lower because of the time of day, the school rush for average families and other things too.
Just looking at American TV for a moment, Meredith Vieira moved to NBC's Today Show which is the top rated breakfast show with an average of 4.5 million viewers. But, she used to present The View, which usually gets 7 million. So she made that jump despite the ratings difference.
I guess that everything is still just speculation on the topic of Christine.
