Good Morning Britain

That's not the case at all when you look at actual figures. The numbers for GMB were very very low when it was on air on UTV Ireland, but in the first hour between 6 and 7am when they were only getting a few thousand Ireland AM wasn't even on air, between 7 and 8am GMB was only 5,000 behind Ireland AM. By the time Ireland AM hits it's peak between 8.30 and 9.30. GMB is off air. So you couldn't compare like for like. There is a very small audience for Breakfast TV in Ireland, the only reason that Ireland AM is on air is that it's an Irish production. It has nothing to do with viewing figures. They'd drop it and most Irish programmes overall if the BAI would allow it.

If you gave GMB the same running time as Ireland AM and 5 years to bed in it would probably beat Ireland AM hands down.

The only place I have seen anyone complaining that RTE don't have breakfast TV is here and one or two corners of the internet. In real life, no one really cares. Now, on the other hand, there would be a problem if This Morning wasn't broadcast on an Irish station.

I don't know if was just the day I watched, the fact that it was on Virgin (not freeview) or the difference between the two ITV playout centres, but it was longer than two seconds. It was more like 5. Like I said, enough for a family member who doesn't pay attention to stuff like this to notice the screen had gone blank while not looking at the screen.

I would assume that any 9am-10am Lorraine programme would have a commercial break with its final advert/trailer/breakbumper ending at 09:24:59. For viewers in STV/UTV land, this would be the day's final sighting of e.g. an ITV-branded breakbumper/trailer. The day's first sighting of STV/UTV would be e.g. a breakbumper at the start of the commercial break circa 09:45, and the first STV/UTV ident & anno would be to introduce This Morning at 10am.

Since (I believe) the 2016 rebrand UTV have started airing their own idents before GMB and UTV break bumpers, trailers etc during GMB.

Seems like Richard Madeley gets to dictate the running order somewhat. When he is on, they go to the news first at 6, or after 2 or 3 minutes, and then have the 'Golden 10/15'

Everyday it's been like normal, with the 'Golden 15' first, except whenever he has presented.

Yes - any ITV Breakfast break will, presumably, have to have completed before the ITV Breakfast to ITV plc/STV switchover point, at which point STV take over advertising for the channel in their area (both in revenue and regulatory terms)

I suspect this was a one off rather than the norm. ITV presentation always insert a 'network black event' at any point where external playout centres (now only STV) join the network feed. For example you'll see a second of black between the ident and every networked programme, the idea being that if STV join slightly early they get a clean opt, rather than a flash of the ITV ident.


The do the same at 9:25 to ensure that STV cleanly opts out, again just in case ITV playout are slightly ahead of STV. Whenever I've seen it it's usually only a second or two as normal. On this occasion I suspect they were underrunning, and as STV can't opt out until 9:25 they had to hold on to black to bridge the gap.

In the LNN/GMTV days, there were macro advertising regions on GMTV, and there was a router salvo fired at 09:25 to reconfigure the five or six outgoing network feeds, back into LNN's 'ITV' outgoing lines config (that ran 09:25 to 05:59). I know because I managed to take This Morning off the air outside London (for a few seconds, that felt like hours) by working on the main rather than the standby config (no one died).

So the pause seen today in some areas, might be similar ?

Public Service Announcement: Never Board a flight with Richard Madeley.

From what I read, it sounds like they are thinking of doing away with any announcer between the shows, instead the presenters of GMB pass to Lorraine who passes to This Morning who in turn pass to Loose Women.

Where have you heard that?

It's correct. One of the question in the Viewback discussion was for our views on seeing the presenters of the following programme interact with the previous presenters - presumably providing a more seamless transition of programmes.

Also, just some further clarity on the news half hour - that one of the questions asked for our views as they intended for the half hour to be presented solely by Charlotte Hawkins.