Reminiscing The Big Breakfast

I’d say it’s a sting being used as an ident.

Also the mention of Jan Leeming reminds me that someone phoned in to remark that her BB stint meant she’d now read the news on ‘every channel’. Confused, she then remembered that yes, she’d read the news on Granada.

Of course by that point Angela Rippon would have been able to go one better and say she’d read the national news on every channel (if we include TV-am, where she sort of read the news).

Yes, it looked so cheap. Wasn't a huge fan of the graphics in the final year anyhow, especially after the nice modern effort of the 2001 revamp, but made very little sense to use them in a pilot presentation. The news desk looked so cheap too.

Makes you think the pilot was a rush job and they couldn't be bothered to design anything new. Which again wouldn't really give Channel 4 much confidence in wanting to commission it.

There was another pilot recorded in a studio rather than the house. It was very different to the Moyles pilot, which I believe was a pitch to Planet 24 rather than to Channel 4.

Makes you wonder if the 2001 revamp hadn't happened and they'd transferred from Johnny and Denise into the final incarnation of the show whether a pilot based around the style of the 2001 revamp may actually have been successful in winning the contract - and having gone through that process been given more than just a couple of months to prove itself.

I'm still pretty sure they pitched a new programme to replace Big Breakfast after it was axed - a rival bid to RI:SE and the others

Planet24 offered two replacements to C4. The 'studio' pilot was called B4 and set in a trendy loft with a huge skyline back projection. It was hosted by Christopher Price and (I think) Krishnan Guru-Murthy

Christopher Price was the host of RDF's proposal. Interestingly a certain Adrian Chiles fronted Talkback's pilot.

Yes, and as Morning Glory points out, quite a few of the companies involved were trying to sign up Krishnan Guru-Murthy because he'd been so effective on the Channel 4 News Specials after 9/11. I said this on another thread but there was some very interesting talent attached to these pitches (I'm not going to say Moyles was one of them), with Guru-Murthy, Chiles and Price (though he'd died by the time the new show began), so it's a bit of a shame we ended up with Mark Durden-Smith, who was useless.

I think Planet 24 were eager to get Chris Moyles involved, given his loyal following on the radio, and as mentioned he did a few stand-in stints and I think they wanted to get him on full-time. But as I say, although Planet 24 were contractually obliged to make a pilot for the replacement, there was seemingly no way that The Big Breakfast could have continued in its current form and any Planet 24 show would have to have been substantially different.



When RI:SE ended, Mark Thompson, who was running C4 at the time, said that although there were benefits of having a live breakfast show, they weren't intending to do another one at the moment because it had only been two years since they last went through the whole process and he didn't think there would likely be any better ideas if they did it again.



Yes, around the same time he did The Terry and Gaby Show. Here's a review of it - http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/oldott/www.offthetelly.co.uk/index9142.html?p=5243

When it began, Evans suggested that there was a big audience around at 7pm who at the moment didn't want to watch Emmerdale or the news, which was probably a very perceptive and sensible suggestion. Unfortunately they didn't want to watch that either. It was a bit like Slap Bang is that nothing actually happened in it, it was just Chris Moyles and he's doing stuff.

Of course after it went off for Christmas, when it came back Christian O'Connell took over for another three months. The only thing I remember about that is when one of the Matrix films was coming out, Five did a Matrix theme night with the original film, a documentary and Christian O'Connell was live from the premiere, and they did press ads about it. Which was about the only time I can remember any promotion of what actually happened on the programme.

Chrismoyles.net used to have a page about the Channel 5 show, suggesting that the moment it was doomed was when a caller swore live on air on the first programme.

Of course if you believe Moyles, Evans disappeared halfway through the production run and never spoke to him again…

I had just started uni when the Moyles C5 show began. I didn't dislike it, it was nothing special, but it was amiable enough way to pass half an hour. I have memories of watching it through snow on the rubbish C5 picture from the set top aerial in my campus room, knackered from early uni life, thinking I should probably head back out and socialise. Odd the things that stick in your head.

Also worth pointing out that although they often ended up on air at the same time, Moyles hadn't been paired with Dominic Byrne as his regular newsreader when they made that pilot. They clearly got on and worked well together and when he got the breakfast show, he requested Dom as his newsreader, so the BB pilot kind of paved the way for the Radio 1 show that followed from 2004.

The UMTV era of Chris' career was one huge misfire.