ITV Breakfast

Presenting/reporting wasn't the issue that morning, it was getting pictures on air they failed at

In “Himoff” Whiteley spoke about he saw ITN’s Paul Davies and told him that he (Whiteley) was in the Grand Hotel and could do an interview. Davies said he couldn’t interview Whiteley because he wa in the business.

In “Himoff” Whiteley spoke about he saw ITN’s Paul Davies and told him that he (Whiteley) was in the Grand Hotel and could do an interview. Davies said he couldn’t interview Whiteley because he was in the business.

You make a valid point about CITV. Also Saturday morning children's TV. They were effectively national ITV sub-channels run by regional ITV companies. They could have been used as a prototype for a breakfast TV programme. News footage would have been supplied by ITN and the regional ITV companies, so the ITV company overseeing the programme would not have had to invest in additional newsgathering facilities above what it already had.



Another valid point. Was it the unions which forced the creation of a breakfast time franchise because of a high level of opposition to regional ITV companies having to have lots of staff come in at 5AM if they ran a breakfast time programme instead?

Yes, and it would have been via the phone, which was exactly what John Stapleton did for TVam as he was in the same or an adajcent hotel. John and Richard were of equal calibre as journos.

The BBC had equally tricky negotiations for Breakfast Time, it wasn't an ITV issue per se.

I don't accept any ITV company could have produced a networked national breakfast show. When did Central, Granada, or YTV ever produce anything as complex as World of Sport or Bank Holiday Sports Special. Thames, LWT and ITN had the proximity to the BT Tower, and therefore the circuits to mount those sort of things

What time was start up generally then prior to the launch of TV-am and Breakfast Time?

Also wonder if throwing the Breakfast franchise in with C4 was ever considered, or whether it was thought to be too much of a financial burden to either be handled by C4 itself or use the same frequencies as a separate franchise.

C4's tx network in 83 had limited national coverage, only about 70% at the start of the year, (it was lower over the UK because all the IBA's engineering resources were applied to ensure S4C had the same coverage as BBC and HTV in Wales from launch date)

Also, C4 probably wasn't even tuned in to everyone's preset in 1983.

Which is why it took until 1987 for schools to move to Channel 4, they had to wait until nearly everyone had access. ITV would have palmed it off earlier if they could have.

Was it a technical requirement that a breakfast time programme or franchise had to be based in London?

Were there any applications for the breakfast franchise that would not have a studio located in London but were rejected simply because there weren't enough circuits in the vicinity of where the studio would be located. I'm vaguely aware that one applicant was based in Manchester.

It could have been anywhere in the UK, in the case of guest etc availability, and the cost of BT to provide all the required circuits whether anywhere other than a major city (London, Brum, Manchester, Leeds) being viable is the question. In 1982 I think not,

As Morning Glory said, Mike Hollingsworth of TVam did phone up Greg Dyke, as he was Director of Programmes at TVS, to ask if they could use their OB vehicles, and he said they could use them if they could get into that, but not to bother him again. But they couldn't get into them anyway, because they were behind the police cordon.