TVAM: would have been 35th birthday today.

Where were the viewers? There had 3 months with dire ratings.

You really have to ask?

Although it's important to note that The Big Breakfast didn't actually overtake GMTV in the ratings until around March 1993, and remained in that position until around Easter 1994.

I quite liked the desk/bookshelves setup.

That was a rhetorical question but if BB was behide GMTV until march 93 where did there go?

Looking at the first hour of TV a few points:

* It wasn't that bad, I would need to see the 7am TOTH hour to make a better judgement.
* Michael Wilson does seem to be the one that not sure how to deal with it.
* Fiona Armstrong does a great job here, from reading the news then to dealing with other people
* I see GMTV did have a cartoon around 07.30 which is different to the BB which had its cartoon ( I think there used all the dangermouse ) at 07.20
* what was the deal with the weather in Brum, why was that moved back to kent house?

I just dont see what the problem was, Where else could you cram in more "popular journalism"? If that is the case why did there create News hour at 6am?

Did Fiona Armstrong dislike Eamonn Holmes?

About 500,000 viewers left GMTV for The BB initially. That was enough to boost the BB but not to put it in the lead as GMTV had further to fall.

Michael Wilson was meant to have been Des Lynam but he turned it down.

I think the problem was that it just wasn't what the viewers liked and were used to. Remember that in its last year TVam went even more populist than it already was, they didn't need to keep the ITC happy any more.

It would always have been a difficult thing to make a success of. Normally such a launch would either be a totally new programme or a replacement for one that's ended because it's declined in popularity. This wasn't the case here, TVam ended because of a mixture of politics and money.

So GMTV had to replace a popular and successful programme and had to do something that was different. But of course that alienated all the viewers who were quite happy with what they had already and wanted to turn on their TV and watch Mike Morris and Lorraine Kelly et al.

Did the BBC so anything to their programme in 1993 to attract any floating viewers, or were they still fully out of the picture as the hard news service at that point?

It was still news heavy with just a newspaper review to leaven it (Again according to Morning Glory)

The set changed in April '93, of course, and the theme tune was re-recorded - but that was it.

Unless I'm mistaken, Robert Williams said on his old TV & Radio Bits site that the virtual set "had the effect of providing viewers with a rather cold, unwelcoming start to the day". Quite a contrast to the original Breakfast Time a decade previously...

It was very cold and forbidding. Technically impressive for the time but soulless.

This appears to be a stereo recording but for some reason the right channel sounds weaker than the left (not just in volume, it sounds tinnier, perhaps VHS degradation as it gets worse throughout the programme). It sounds to me as though the ITV menu music is in stereo but I think the GMTV theme is only mono - hard to tell as it sounds stronger coming from the left channel.

I only point it out as there was discussion in my NICAM thread that GMTV struggled with the stereo requirement at the start of their franchise.