GMTV boss quits

Why does the news hour only last 53 minutes (including commercial breaks)??????? I thought an hour was 60 minutes (and I do include commercials breaks)!!!

You've obviously never studied social demographics or worked in the media, then.

There's not many programmes that I truly detest but GMTV has just got to be one of them.

Appealing to the lowest common denominator with an appalling team of presenters .

Fiona Phillips - clearly bored after a century of presenting this dross, Andrew Castle - makes me yearn for the days of Eamon Holmes, Ben Shepard - the station's male totty (or so he seems to believe), Kate Garroway - thinking she is everbody's mate. Jenni 'I love me , who do you love?' Falconer.

I know not everbody wants hard news but this mob go to the opposite extreme and needs a bit more balance.

I know... anyone would think that ITV (or GMTV) is supposed to provide public-service broadcasting; with high-quality and high-brow journalism

It has an obligation to at least try .

Why this fixation over the 'Theatre of News' ? That would make it feel totally detatched from the rest of GMTV. Added to the fact that you'd be financing the running of 2 studios and crews, they do have a budget to work to.

GMTV was always somewhere between the "anarchic" Big Breakfast and the "heavyweight" Breakfast. It has a considerable audience who like what they do, and it's aimed at that demographic. Why does it need to be a clone of what is already out there ?

It's all very easy to make these sweeping generalisations just because you don't like something, but they bare little relation to the real life commercial situation.

Would you say that GMTV could do with a big brash opening that really hits home? Like what they do in America, sorry there i go again with the American thing.

But that's the point, GMTV isn't a news programme.

Is it really the word 'news' in the newshour title that annoys you? The only reason it is seperate is so it can have a seperate set of presenters and a slightly more newsy agenda

What benefit would moving it to the ITV News studio serve?

Nope - on both counts. I'm a trainee teacher. Even so, I don't think it is fair to say that Breakfast viewers are "more likely to live in the home counties" because it's obviously false. You can't generalise like that.

It is contracted to provide news, sport, current issues, regional news and community stories. Agreed it does some of this quite well, BUT it also provides far too much magazine style (i.e. Nationwide) stories.

If they want a Newshour then it should be for News, Sport, Business, Regional News and current issues - it should be a more formal programme and not talk down to its viewers.

If they want a "Nationwide" style magazine then, yes, it should be renamed as the programme title is VERY misleading. At this moment of time they try to mix the two and to be honest the Newshour is barely watchable.

One plus point for The Newshour is that the regional outputs are very much newsbased and far superior to the regional outputs on BBC. Now if the Newshour was like that all the way through then it would be a good news programme.

BTW I only go one about using the Theatre of News studio as it is really underused by ITV and it would be a good starting point for a formal newshour programme on GMTV. If I remember correctly when GMTV first started didn't the weather come from Central TV in Birmingham?


I only watch BBC Breakfast for the paper reviews and for the business stories with Declan between 630am and 7am (UK Time)

Gosh. unmissable. I wish I was so dedicated. But then I'm into girls, cars, and tut tut...booze.

between 6.30 and 7am? is that healthy?