ITV supersizes key daytime shows

ITV is to supersize both Good Morning Britain and This Morning to fill the gap left by Jeremy Kyle, handing both titles an extra 30 minutes.

From 6 January, Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid will extend their breakfast show by half an hour, to run for three hours to 9am.

Lorraine will then play for an hour, before This Morning airs for two-and-a-half hours for the first time in its 31-year history, between 10am and 12.30pm. Loose Women will remain in its 12.30pm slot.

ITV’s recently-promoted managing director of daytime Emma Gormley said both shows’ production teams would be “bolstered” with additional dedicated staff to handle the extra workload. All current on-screen talent will remain on-board.

Gormley said that having four magazine-style shows across the seven-and-a-half hours up to the lunchtime news would enable ITV Studios to “use the advantage of being live” to adapt to breaking stories “nimbly and flexibly”.

“If a big story breaks on Good Morning Britain, we can follow it on Lorraine, into This Morning and Loose Women without any gaps,” she said.

Both GMB and This Morning will use their extra half-hours to introduce new segments and potentially new talent, while staying with interviews longer where needed, she said.

“This feels like the ideal opportunity for us to do something more ambitious. It’s testament to the strength of these brands that ITV has given us this opportunity”
Emma Gormley, managing director of ITV daytime

“If you work in live TV, you’re not fazed by an extra half-hour,” she said. “We’ll be able to let interviews breathe and add more stories and guests where the opportunities arise. We will always endeavour to surprise.”

She added: “One of my biggest fears is staying the same - that’s when shows decline. This feels like the ideal opportunity for us to do something more ambitious. It’s testament to the strength of these brands that ITV has given us this opportunity.”

Since ITV axed Kyle in May, it has filled the 9.25am-10.30am gap largely with repeats of Judge Rinder.

Collectively, the four shows command an average 17.4% share of audiences, having grown year-on-year since 2014’s dip of 14.9%.

Its new-look schedule will kick in four months ahead of Channel 4’s planned return to live daytime TV with Expectation and Can Can Productions’ The Steph Show, which is due to begin next May.

“In daytime, it is really tough to change viewing habits, but in a challenging scheduling world, it’s great there is a massive appetite for big shows,” said Gormley.

“We have four big juggernauts that feel very in tune with our viewers’ needs and habits and very connected with them via social media.”

ITV’s recent daytime restructure has paved the way for the changes, with Gormley getting a direct line to Kevin Lygo as well as Julian Bellamy, and head of entertainment Katie Rawcliffe paired with commissioning editor Lara Akeju and commissioning assistant Leanne Clarke to cover the afternoons.

“Now that our mornings are about these four shows, all year around, we don’t need commissioning firepower, but strategic oversight,” she said.