It's the same with News at Ten - sometimes it is quite handy to have it start a few minutes past the hour. FYIW Sky had completed their headline sequence before the BBC had even started theirs last night.
That may be the case if it was doing it at that time every morning, but they're not, are they? OK, they did the news at 7.12 yesterday, so I'll get up at 7.10 so I can see it. Oh no, they did it at 7.03 today, so I missed it. What use is that to anyone? The show should be working around what the audience wants, not the other way round.
Also, the comparison when the Ten O'Clock News is a pointless one because regardless of how extended their headlines sequence is, it is clearly still the headlines. When you tune in to Good Morning Britain at seven o'clock and they're blithely sauntering through the showbiz news or in the middle of an interview, should you stay tuned for the headlines? Or have they already done them? Who knows? They're supposed to be giving you information, not making you try and find it.
But I don’t get why timings get some forumers so wound up. If you want a formulaic format, you have the BBC and Sky. Why shouldn’t ITV offer something different, where if a story needs more time they give it?
Well, if ever there was a story that needed more time, they surely had it today - but were talking about something else completely different (and though interesting, clearly less vital) at seven o'clock. If anything it's this show's inflexibility that's the problem, if they look like they're going to sail past the hour (and by some distance) you would think they'd have the wit to shuffle things around. We saw back in February when they did the entire show as an OB from the Oscars, the morning after large and disruptive storms had hit the UK and Covid was becoming a big thing, and they gave them the shortest shrift imaginable to plough on with the Oscar chat. The same is true here, five minutes to the hour is when most news programmes do their fluffiest material and is the first thing that goes when big stories intervene. But they're not doing that, so you end up with all channels covering the top story and Good Morning Britain doing a cat up a tree.
As I say, they're apparently a serious and hard-hitting news programme when they want to be, demanding ministers come on to impart the latest information, but then they're happy to let the news go out of the window if they fancy a chat. As I say, they only have to hit the top of the hour twice in the entire programme. They can do what the hell they like the rest of the time. The Big Breakfast managed to do it, even at its most shambolic. Chris Evans and Chris Moyles managed to do it, even when they were talking for the rest of the hour. I bet they're not so lassez-faire when it comes to hitting the adverts on time. I don't recall Victoria Derbyshire getting a free pass for doing something "different" under the banner of news, either.
Elsewhere on this forum people complain about "filler" (ie, talking about dancing) on Strictly and "waffle" (ie, Richard Ayoade being funny) on The Crystal Maze, as apparently that gets in the way of the serious business. Good Morning Britain arsing around with the showbiz news for several minutes when the audience might be waiting for the main headlines, not a problem apparently.