Sunday Brunch

When The Saturday Show started they made great play about the fact it was going to be completely different to Live and Kicking and there'd be no more Mr Blobby and Rugrats and it would be aimed at a much older audience. Six months later, they announced the only increase in audience had come from five to seven year olds.

The big problem with Live and Kicking was that they should have dropped it when Zoe and Jamie left, but seemingly they decided that they'd already successfully recast it so they could do it again, but Steve Wilson and Emma Ledden were hopeless. I know it sounds stupid to complain the Beeb were doing childish children's programmes, but it stopped appealing to a wider audience. I remember hearing at the time that the Beeb were getting a bit concerned that under Zoe and Jamie, Live and Kicking was getting a bit too adult and appealing more to older viewers than kids, but they went too far into the opposite direction, because they got rid of the comedy as well (before Supergirly turned up a few months in) and made it a bit more overtly juvenile, so most people just switched over to SMTV. Then they messed it up by relaunching it again to make it more like SMTV, but that didn't work because Live and Kicking was now an old, tired brand and also SMTV was doing the same thing. You'd think they'd have been better off appealing to the kind of viewer who wanted something a bit slower-moving and more cerebral.

The Saturday Show then ended up turning into Live and Kicking again, but the only reason ratings really rose was because SMTV ran out of steam, Ant and Dec going obviously hit it hard and then James Redmond was sacked which was nasty and then you had a revolving door of presenters. H and Claire presented for about six months and then abruptly disappeared, then turned up as guests as if they'd never been on before. I wish TV shows wouldn't get rid of presenters with no explanation, it just looks ridiculous.

By the time SMTV ended, of course, it was Dick and Dom, but The Saturday Show carried on in the summer for the next two years because the summer shows were made by BBC Scotland and presumably they wanted to give them something to do.

I remember reading Motormouth was occasionally beating Going Live, and What's Up Doc beat the first series of Live and Kicking, but then they had Rugrats and they started putting Superman on before it and What's Up Doc's ratings plummeted. When it was axed, Broadcast quoted someone from STV saying "We had two good years but last year we reallly got thumped".

Good old Fully booked, set in a highland hotel, which was also used for over sevens years as the set for CiN in Scotland. again someone DOON south started mucking around with it and it become FBI: Fully booked interactive and that boomed, Last 4 months of L&K come from Glasgow and there started to make more changes, networked did not care as it was getting axed so Queen Margaret drive started to put a bit more effort into it.



What up doc was on its S2 when L&K come in, it should be noted that STV had also created S1. it was always in Scottish tv hands. The trouble started in S3 when it was still rating winner, problems did appear from the ITC and other complaints. Live and kicking would never had beat WUD if the below did not happen....




Channel 4 now sees it got a better chance of pulling the viewers with Sunday brunch than T4, which has to be concluded a poor state..

to get Zack from Scrubs on it ivory

I dunno where London are coming into it, if anything the problem was the same show coming back year after year for political reasons to give BBC Scotland something to do. Hence Fully Booked was completely revamped in 1998, losing the hotel gimmick completely and just being some generic kids show, and then being revamped again as FBi. The reason FBi "boomed" wasn't because of any mucking around by London but because it was now back on Saturday morning, rather than Sundays, putting it up against a rampant SMTV, and FBi was the same boring stuff. It's like Live and Kicking, they should have replaced the brand, not constantly tried revamping it.

Of course up until the late nineties the reason the Saturday morning shows were so big was because the other alternatives were the Open University on BBC2 or something dull on C4 so you had huge adult audiences watching them as well. Nowadays there are a million alternatives, and kids have got out of the habit of switching to BBC1 and ITV for kids shows. Same with Sundays, when T4 began it was religion and adult education on the Beeb and ITV. For many years there were virtually no kids shows on Sundays at all on any channel, bar a Play School repeat at 9am.

There's probably quite an argument that Saturday morning kids' tv only lasted so long and became such a genre in it's own right because of the amount of adults watching in addition to the children. The last Going Live even surprised a police station who always watched on a Saturday - so not even trying to hit the target audience there! The next logical step from this was the SM:TV/Dick and Dom era when a lot of it was innuendo-laden to entice the old audience. And then, once the adult audience had other options, the viewing figures crashed and you end up with TMi getting 100,000 viewers compared to the 2-3m the likes of Going Live used to get.

I would argue the format completely changed with The Saturday Show though. The classic BBC format was phoning in to ask guests questions, reviews of music/films, viewers' letters, etc. Obviously this was tweaked heavily along the way but the final series of L&K and then The Saturday Show onwards pretty much abandoned all of this in favour of more studio games, sketches and live performances. Not that there hadn't been any of this previously but the balance tipped quite heavily and after the awful Steve and Emma series that format was pretty much binned.

The irony of the situation was that in the 20th anniversary documentary Chris Bellinger said "it has to keep evolving to stay fresh", or words to that effect. In the event that was exactly what they didn't do and for a good four years or so ITV won the ratings battle.

A lot of the success of SMTV was because it was really kid-friendly as well, though, I remember in the first few episodes of Wilson and Ledden-era Live and Kicking you had Phil Collins and Sting, who by that point were completely outside the target audience. So you had the worst of both worlds, the presenters were now pitching at a younger audience but the guests were of no interest to kids. Whereas SMTV had adult guests, but interesting ones, so it seemed far cooler. Eggy Pumps is probably the moment SMTV went stratospheric because it proved it was a show on the kids' side.

The other reason why SMTV overtook Live and Kicking of course is because SMTV stayed on all year round. Previously the Beeb would win the winter and ITV would win the summer and kids stuck with ITV when Live and Kicking came back, because SMTV had managed to iron out its teething problems when nobody was watching. Hence why the Beeb then started running them all year round.

Yes, that too. 1998/1999 also marked a turning point for the guests that would be on the BBC - normally you'd have a politician occasionally or grown up stars of the sort you mention, but these went out of the window towards the end as they hurtled towards the kiddy end of the market. And this did no favours at all to the ageing L&K format as you ended up with the likes of S Club 7 and Steps in the Hot Seat who really had very little to say whatsoever, unlikely some of the previous Hot Seat guests.



Yep and that was more by accident than design as I think they ended up commissioning a 52-week series more out of desperation than anything, to avoid having to create something else to fill up the summer months. The BBC's slightly odd policy of sticking Fully Booked on Sundays since 1996 also didn't help as it meant during the summer months ITV didn't really have any opposition so could pick up the audience once they had a winning format.

Fully booked did very well for itself on Sunday beating itv. Did bbc scotland make any summer replacements before FB?

I just think sunday brunch producers should let of T4 be produced by somelse who coils give it oohf? There jjst see SB as the bigger money spinner.

No one else has pointed out that same time t4 started was also when the bbc started hiting the rocks.

What are BBC two going to fill up the slot woth?

I meant ITV didn't have any opposition on summer Saturday mornings, other than Saturday Aardvark which was basically branded CBBC continuity links.

T4 was started by Andi Peters, not long after he left his head of yoof programmes at LWT. Although when it did start the brand was used for all of Channel 4's teen and childrens output, which really didn't work, but not before too long T4 became used for the teen programmes, yet during this time they were showing The Waltons in the T4 block, which really didn't work.

ooh yes T4 used to also include cartoons such as catdog from 7am

Here's somebody who's been viewing my channel I echo what you've said. The Emma and Steve L&K era was terrible as especially evident in this clip where they completely lost track of the running order!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2guXWw_NN8

I'm reminded of Robin Blamires' pdf on Saturday mornings which is very informative but unfortunately I don't think the link works anymore.

No it really took off when Ant & Dec and Cat [a few months later] left. The original presenters of the Saturday show were Dani Behr and Joe Mace. Two presenters who were known for more 'adult' shows.
It was quite a surprise that they were dropped after just a year as both the ratings and the show had improved markedly especially in the later months.

They were replaced in the Autumn of 2002 by the more 'CBBC' Fearne Cotton (who was only 19) and Simon Grant. Their debut also coincided with the Launch of 'Top Of The Pops-Saturday' which aired at 11.15 getting a head start on CD.UK.

Both eras of the show were never simucast on the CBBC Channel which had its own Saturday Morning shows. in Autumn 2001 they had The Saturday Show extra and from Autumn 2002 it launched Dom and Dick in da Bungalow
The Saturday show Extra aired at the same time as The Saturday show on BBC ONE and they were basically in a small studio providing links to cartoons and interviewing people who had already appeared on the main show. A year later they saw sense and moved it to 12 O clock and ran the new show 'Dick and Dom in da Bungalow' from 9-12.

Anyway 5 months after Fearne Cotton and Simon Grant had taken over, The Saturday show overtook SM.TV Live.
Soon after this Conor McAnally exec producer of SMTV live was looking around for new presenters for a revamped show and found Dick and Dom.
In order to prevent them from being poached by ITV, the BBC had to move Da Bungalow over to BBC ONE for the majority of the year and The Saturday show was relegated to the Summer.
Top of the Pops Saturday continued all year round and expanded to an hour hosted by Fearne.



They were terrible. Up there with Coleen Nolan and Twiggy as the worst replacements ever!

I'm fairly sure that by the time Dick and Dom moved to BBC ONE, SMTV was already axed. IIRC it was axed a few weeks after failing to poach Dick and Dom. It was their last ditch effort to save the show.
The first episode of Bungalow on BBC ONE was against SM.TV Gold.