Good Morning Britain

Good Morning Britian.


I think the more risky change is Lorraine’s timing. It has been in the same 8:30/8:35 slot since around 2000 now iirc and it rates well. 8:30 to 9:00 is quite a change considering the time of day, at 8:30 a large section of audience is finishing or nearly completed the school run to come in to Lorraine on the TV, whereas by 9am have many mums already got home? And will turn on GMB with Piers etc. Which is quite a difference. I can see the benefits of extending GMB though, maybe it’s another way to build GMB’s exposure to Lorraine’s audience. I don’t think This Morning changing to 10am is too much of an issue because I’m not sure people are doing vastly different things between those two times. The interesting thing will be does This Morning gain half an hour? Does Loose Women get an increased running time? I don’t think they’ll move the Lunchtime News from 1:30 as it’ll go up against the BBC’s and leaves a 30 minute gap in the afternoon.

A news focused 6am-6:30 GMB is interesting, lots of questions about that. Will that be branded as just part of GMB? Will it be with the main GMB team, so Piers and Susanna or does the newsreader do the first 30 minutes solo? I think it would start getting messy if GMB has different format on the first 30 minute or had Piers coming in later. I’d almost suggest bring back the ITV Morning News at 6am then start GMB at 6:30-9:00 with the current team.

I think it's more likely they'd increase This Morning's runtime as Loose Women would struggle somewhat at 90 minutes

If they brought TM back to 10am, Virgin Media One would have to finish up with Ireland AM at 10, meaning reducing their Home Programming by half an hour which I’m sure they wouldn’t want to do as Ireland AM is their lifeline when it comes to home programming. An easy solution to that would be bring their News at 5:30 back to 5 and make it an hour long program.

If VM still decided to broadcast TM and ITV extended This Mornings airtime, that would mess up their News at 12:30 as well. I wouldn’t think they’d want to move it to one o’clock as that means competing with RTÉ.

I don't think Virgin Media Ireland would be in the minds of the ITV programming executives when considering changing their daytime schedules. The ITV management attitude to any daytime changes from Virgin Media Ireland would be just one word - "tough"

I never said that it would be. I was looking at it from Virgin Media’s perspective, not ITV’s.

In fact, they value Ireland AM so much that they didn't renew Mark Cagney's Contract. He was with the show 20 years and appears to be very popular with the few that watch Ireland AM. It wouldn't surprise me if when the next economic Downturn comes along that Virgin Media try to drop Ireland AM and Broadcast GMB and Lorraine instead. It would probably get better figures for less money. Even right now that's more talk in Ireland about the weekly Morgan outburst than anything Ireland AM puts out

Last time I checked (just after JK was pulled off the air) it still does go blank for a few seconds at the switch point. I actually had a family member ask me if something was wrong with the TV when it happened.

Not keen on the 9.25 divide disappearing but suspect Lorraine probably rates rather well in Scotland so STV may benefit.

The former channel UTV Ireland tried that and it failed 100% - they decided to air GMB with short news updates for their own, and it quickly bombed in the ratings, making UTV Ireland's plunge even worse, so no Virgin Media will never go down that path again. Ireland AM is cheap, based in studio and gets reasonable viewers to cover expenses, it will continue - it is Ireland's only breakfast television programme, and Virgin Media Ireland will want to keep that fact alive, to show up RTE the national broadcaster who favour Morning Ireland on RTE Radio 1 at breakfast time than any proper breakfast television. Even RTE have given up on their short morning news summaries, introduced in 1997.

That could be at a break. It’s not ideal, but the next part of the programme could start at 9:25.

No doubt about it they would break there - it would effectively become 2 shows.

What's more interesting is what happens at 6am - would it be a 30 minute GMB News bulletin or a revival of the ITV Morning News. You'd think half hour fronted by Charlotte would be most cost-effective.

Actually it works both ways at 6am and 9:25am, and its not "a few seconds", its only ever been one or two on the occasions where I'd been around to see. That's probably just to officially separate it.

We're well past the era now where transmitters switch feeds at 6am and 9:25am (and 7pm/5:15pm in London) regardless of whether the source is ready or not and considering the regional optouts (which apparently were tooted for TV-am and then for whatever reason didn't happen) suggest everything is pretty much centralised anyway.