GMTV Hours Extended?

I noticed on Saturday morning that Toonattik was on till 10:30am. This made me think that the GMTV show had now been 'divorced' from GMTV and was now a main ITV1 show.

It turned out however that what we saw was GMTV broadcasting till the end of Toonattik, with the adverts usually seen on GMTV2 Kids.

Has anybody else noticed this or read about the agreement GMTV have received to extend their hours? Was it a one-off? Is it regular? Does this pave the way for GMTV to blur the edges between their children's output and CITV?

This usually happen when the F1 is on, Once every year on a Sunday GMTV starts about 09.15 because of the I’m think it the Japan one, as it start at 6am in the morning. this is beside the point

Is it possible can I also ask about GMTV contract?
Does ITV only have the legal right to broadcast on channel 3 for 21 ½ a day? With the reaming time going to GMTV?

GMTV is a seperate channel from ITV1 (although ITV plc owns a large chunk of it) so ITV1 cannot broadcast between 6am and 9.25am.

I think it was probably to make up for the time they lost to F1 the previous sunday....

I think this has happened before. A kind of a swap, in which ITV get to show the Formula 1 and they swap with GMTV. It rings a bell from before.

Yep - it happens when ITV show an F1 race in GMTVs usual slot. There is usually a post here about it when it happens...

The reason is that GMTV have a set number of hours for their breakfast franchise, which - like Teletext - is a national licence not a regional one. They agree with ITV to shift hours when ITV have a major event to show - like a Grand Prix.

GMTV is not a programme on ITV1, it is a separate national ITV1 franchise. Effectively the old regional franchises - like Anglia, Meridian, Granada etc. only had a franchise to broadcast for a portion of the day, 0930-0600ish - with TVam then GMTV having the 0600-0925 bit - with a little bit of a switchover gap ISTR?

The reason why the TX hours of GMTV/TV-am are bizarrely 0600- 0925 was to fit in regional news from 0925-0930 when ITV first began TV-am in the 80s.

Well orignally TV-am was 6.00am-9.15am, then at 9.15am TV-am would close down to allow British Telecom to reconnect to all of the ITV Stations, this took a few minutes to do, but it meant that the ITV stations would be back on air a smidge before 9.25am so they would be allowed to commence their start-up sequences.

But when BT automated the sequence, TV-am went to the IBA to ask for an extension to their hours, so it was agreed (in May 1983 I believe) that TV-am would now end at 9.25am, so ITV stations could start at 9.25am with a start-up that would take them up to 9.30am and their first programme. By the mid 1980's the slot was used by Regional News, then by 1988 the Regional News was moved to 9.55am with the new ITV Daytime schedule, so a programme now started at 9.25am ASAP.

It has been 9.25am ever since and no-one seems bothered to change it. ITV and GMTV did experiment a few years ago when GMTV would go off at 9.26/7 and then they would go to This Morning for a preview and then have a programme start at 9.30am and a normal bog standard start-up would also commence.

Did they? when was this?

A Very brief period during 1998, whilst ITV still had The Vanessa Show as ISTR. Though it didn't last long, but I do remember it.

Also remembered when GMTV managed to get some Villa type programme on ITV at 1.30pm roughly at the same time, which was a first for GMTV to get a Network slot.

Similar agreements were run during the Football and Rugby World Cups in 2002 and 2003, where many matches took place at breakast time.

On the 9th October due to the Japanese Grand Prix GMTV was on from 8.05-11.30am. Still the same length, just over 2 hours later than usual

On the 16th October due to Chinese Grand Prix GMTV was on from 9.00-11.30am. Only 2 and a half hours long.

On the 23rd October GMTV made this time up and was on from 6.00-10.20am.

Tommorow its actually on from 6.00-9.40am, I'm not sure where that extra 15 mins comes from, unless one of those F1's ran over or something