BBC is legs ahead in breakfast TV battle.
At first look, there are two things wrong with Good Morning Britain and they’re sitting either side of Ben Shephard and Susanna Reid. It’s not Charlotte Hawkins and Sean Fletcher in particular, just that they are there. When it comes to breakfast television presenters, four’s a crowd.
Add to that the assault on the eyes with pastel coloured graphics and rolling news bar along the bottom of the screen (OK, there are three things wrong) and the hourly news bulletins when they all pitched in to read a story in turn began to feel like I was watching a game of doubles tennis with three balls on the go. It was all a bit much to take in at seven in the morning.
Over on BBC things are a lot more relaxed. For a start, presenters Charlie Stayt and Louise Minchin are on a sofa and, as ITV are finding out with their desk bound presenters (OK, four things), viewers have liked to see a woman’s legs in the morning since the time of Selina Scott.
We should be thankful the internet wasn’t about at the time of Selina as things get very weird online with weather girl Carol Kirkwood, whose name is linked with all sorts of suggestions when you type it into Google, the most suitable of which that I can repeat in a family newspaper is “tights.”
Let’s just say there must have been a moan of disgruntlement when Carol appeared to present the weather from a rainy Crieff on Thursday draped in an anorak of her own.
Back in the dry studio Louise was engaged in a morning-long battle with a news story on “Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary,” which she’d abridged to “police watchdog” by 7am and handed over to Charlie to read by the time of the 7.30 bulletin. It was a rare misstep from the BBC crew and if we’re looking for reasons why Breakfast pulls in double the viewers as their ITV rival it was probably in a throwaway line in a story about an angler who’d caught a giant catfish.
“It weighed 55 kilograms,” Louise told us, and while a nation scratched their heads and collectively wondered “how much is that?” Charlie jumped in with a helpful “That’s eight stone ten.”
That’s the BBC for you. When it comes to tradition, they know what viewers want.
Breakfast Television: BBC & ITV, Monday to Friday.
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