Good Morning Britain - the launch

They seem to be cutting direct to the regions this week. I did hear from a contact at ITV that they were looking really hard to fix the problem with the pre-rec handovers.

Problems?

How awkward they come across on air etc. IMO, taking the feed of the bed that London are playing as the fall back, and run Ben's intro straight away, making it look like it is just a camera change. Then the region can either fade the bed, or keep it running if they like.

However the regions (except for STV and UTV) don't opt out of the network feed, they are opted out at Chiswick and Leeds, (controlled by a router salvo, fired off by GMB's gallery) It's conjecture whether they
have a feed of network audio on their desks ?

If they don't have it, I'm sure they could get it?

Well, I'm not sure, I suppose the ITV regions must have some sort of contribution circuit(s), in order to be fed material by ITN and other places (although won't that be just an ftp transfer these days ?), but does anyone know if they get clean studio audio from GMB ?

Not worth the bother really when they can just hand over directly without a pre-recorded introduction.

Kate was operating a Hub type set-up at the screen of the 'interview area' this morning, reading out viewer feedback of the 'Misbehaving School-Children' story. I know that with many people This Morning's Hub wasn't popular, although I think it would have worked quite nicely with GMB.

I was waiting for them to do something like this right from the beginning.

Feeding clean audio to every region but with a matched delay to the London/Leeds version of GMB is non-trivial I suspect.

I suspect to allow the bed from London to continue under a pre-recorded announcement played out from the regional centre would mean that the bed would need to be fed via a separate circuit to the regional centres, to be mixed in with the announcement, and then this would be fed back to Chiswick Park / Leeds to be "crash opted" at the opt-out point. (STV and UTV possibly different) The round trip from TLS to the regional centres and back to Chiswick Park/Leeds would need to match the delay from TLS to Chiswick Park/Leeds direct for it not to judder.

You'd need to do the audio mix in the regional centre to ensure it was handled correctly based on the length of the regional anno (and I don't think Chiswick Park/Leeds have the facilities to do a separate audio mix for each region anyway - sounds like they can only do a "crash opt" on a router salvo)

I'm sure when the live shows start on X Factor they'll be pushing GMB a lot more by promoting the fact the contestant leaving the show will be on Mondays GMB. Good ploy to promote it when ITV has its biggest audience.

Be interesting to see how far they push and for how long. If the trails don't bump the ratings/share then I'm sure there will be a push from other areas of ITV to promote their shows...