Good Morning Britain

The ITV Breakfast licence is different and also replaces STV and UTV between 0600 and 0925.

But presumably there's nothing technically stopping them from either binning GMB for the day or conversely, running it earlier and for longer? Would there need to be a cursory phone call to OFCOM or is it a case that ITV can basically run whatever they want? (I guess STV may have an opinion at the moment too)

Not wanting to take this too off topic but the breakfast license just seems odd. Apart from Thames/LWT I assume there was nothing written into the license that said a particular region couldn't be on air 24hrs if they wanted to? So did the IBA suddenly make up a breakfast license and all the other regions just went 'ok then'? Did none of them think they could sustain a breakfast show and so just rolled over at losing over 3hrs of potential airtime every day?

It's interesting, the UK's first Breakfast TV programme was Good Morning Calendar from YTV (presented by Central's Bob Warman) and didn't last all that long...

I presume things are less strict now but there was that occassion in the early days of GMTV when UTV opted out to show breaking news coverage, and ended up in hot water because of it, leading directly to them not doing the news bulletins during GMTV or Daybreak until only a few years ago

It's interesting that YTV's version of the breakfast programme is quoted as the first, when Tyne Tees ran the same experiment at the same time. I'm pretty sure in fact that TTTV's programme actually started a couple of minutes earlier than YTV's....

They did such a good job of it nobody even seems to remember it! Come to it I don't remember many TTTV productions for network

If you remember then they have ran over to 10.30 before. First time for the Scottish independence referendum and then again earlier this year for one of the European Terror attacks (think it was Brussels) when they handed over to This Morning.


I wonder how the results show will work. Ie. Whether they'll have anyone in the UK studio and who's going to be there. Also worth noting that earlier in the year they were bigging up the fact that Jerry Springer was going be election correspondent when in reality he's done an interview with Piers and Susanna about 3 or 4 times.

I'm surprised they are sending Susanna out to New York for the results program. I think it's safe to say Charlotte (and maybe Kate/Ranvir) will be in the studio, for the reaction from the UK.

I wonder where in New York they will be broadcasting from? Hopefully they will pick a better location than they did for the Scottish Referendum; a balcony overlooking a dark and later foggy Edinburgh didn't exactly add much.

Outside of a few anoraks on web forums (and I doubt even they would be aware if the first edition hadn't been recorded for posterity), I suspect the number of people who remember YTV's version of a cheaply-made, 15-minute programme 40 years ago could be counted on the fingers of one hand in all honesty, never mind the parallel TTTV version.

Nothing to stop them afaik, certainly for a one off, although STV would be at liberty not to take it outside of 0600-0925.


AIUI there was a lot of scepticism that anybody would want to watch TV at breakfast time. The ITV companies weren't interested in extending their hours - they didn't think it would be worth their while - so the IBA decided to run it as a separate franchise.

This was almost repeated when the IBA was trying to encourage 24 hour broadcasting, with proposals to establish a separate overnight franchise if the ITV companies didn't introduce an overnight service.

Looking at some old TV Times from the late 70s, there were examples of regions starting up at about 8.55 at the weekend.

It seems odd in this day and age, but you're forgetting a very important part of this situation - the unions. They ruled ITV with a tighter grip than the IBA and would have been a key factor in any ITV company extending its transmission hours. Even if the network commissioned a centrally made programme, each region would have to run a fully staffed channel, including technicians to run the ads.

Would it have been worth all that negotiation, potential strikes, overtime pay for unsociable hours, just for three hours of television that at most would be watched by a couple of million? The ratings broken down between each region wouldn't be particularly attractive to advertisers.

I get the feeling that most of the network thought ITN would win and therefore they retained a vested interest without each having the huge overheads.

Of course, TV-am broke the unions so things have changed. Technology has advanced also, which makes breakfast television more affordable - and therefore if ITV just ran normal programming between 6 and 9:25, STV would have a huge case for claiming the slot for its own franchise. It is after all, paying a set fee per annum for ITV network programming.

I'm sure there would be all kinds of internal politics if it was planned for the ITV News programme to replace GMB in a pre planned scenario rather than a breaking news scenario.

Who pays the wages of everyone working on the ITV News programme 6:00-9:25 as ITN aren't paid by ITV to provide a service at that time, and then you've got the GMB staff who are paid, and aren't required.