Steph's Packed Lunch

I wasn't 'vexed', I simply pointed out that you were looking in the wrong place.

I daresay Peter Simon gets more viewers on an Ideal World overnight on ITV.

C4's remit is to cater for minorities, but you have to wonder just how small a slice of the audience they are prepared to accept for "Steph's Buttybox" before replacing it with yet more CDWM repeats.

I guess the other side of the coin is that we've seen a single edition of this show, and people are making some very strong statements. I've not seen it, but I do know that shows like this tend to take a while to grow. Perhaps writing it off on day one is a little hasty?

The daytime 'lifestyle' market is already well served by ITV and it's so typically mainstream. C4's remit is to tell untold stories, take creative risks, drive innovation and to take more risks than other channels, not just to replicate them. Having a chat about the new series of Bake Off doesn't exactly fit with this remit.

A business / consumer, economy focused programme especially during this pandemic however would definitely be of value at that time and provide something different. i think Steph's Business Lunch would have been better and still be from the 'northern powerhouse', Leeds.

She's the absolute perfect fit to front a Working Lunch revival, as I believe has already been mentioned in this thread.

Why do I feel Channel 4 have signed Steph up without thinking what format would suit her best. Surely they would know Loose Women's audience were unlikely to switch. If they wanted a show like this, surely 3 or 4 o'clock would have been a better slot? Steph's Afternoon Tea or whatever?

Wow how awkward is this segment with Kammy?!

I think someone along the way has over estimated how popular Steph on her own actually is

Yes she was popular on Breakfast and became the go-to face for any light factual on BBC One at one point, but most people are popular within those formats, it's pretty hard not to be, so it doesn't always translate to elsewhere

Not sure what sort of audience Countdown gets these days but suspect her appearance there from tomorrow is no coincidence, although I doubt it would add more than 10-20k to the figure. Agree Afternoon Tea would be better - frankly if they're going after the This Morning audience I think the last thing most This Morning viewers want after two and a half hours of This Morning is more This Morning.

To be honest though there should be room for more than one daytime magazine show on British TV - and from what I saw yesterday this isn't a bad effort at all so it deserves a chance.

Well, C4 did do this in the nineties with Light Lunch, in the same slot too, which felt like a proper alternative to the other channels and enjoyed a real cult following (though it was never the same after it moved to teatime). You could argue that the challenge for C4 is that what used to be alternative has now become very mainstream, and the other channels have been influenced by them, so it no longer feels particularly different.

It's like The Big Breakfast, when that started it was absolutely light years ahead of the alternative, but it was so influential that you could see its impact on other shows. Don't Forget Your Toothbrush is another example, when that began it was a big show and seemed much fresher than the tired old Saturday night output on BBC1 and ITV. But now people like Keith Lemon and Alan Carr are on primetime ITV.

I like Steph a lot, and I think it's underselling her to say anyone could be a success on Breakfast, she had a really likeable and distinctive personality. But she does need a format that's more than just Steph doing stuff, in the same way Slap Bang was a flop because it was just Ant and Dec doing stuff.

I have to admit, it’s nice to have a daytime TV programme live from a dockside location in a northern city again. I’m guessing there’s no room in Clarence Dock for a floating weather map sadly though.

That said, and having watched half an hour, I’ve yet to be grabbed by anything. It’s all passable stuff, but nothing’s made me think I need to tune in again tomorrow - it’s all just very unremarkable. It’s early days though, and I’m sure there will be tweaks to the format.

The thing that struck me the most though when I first put it on was just how echoey the sound was. I know it’s not a purpose-built studio, but surely they could have done something to soften the acoustics. It sounds dreadful.