Some of the greatest minds of our generation have struggled to get to grips with the thorny conundrum of breakfast television. Should it be fluffy, should it be tough, should it do sofas or puppet rats or news? Back in the 1980s, many believed it shouldn’t do any of them, and shouldn’t exist at all. As Nick Ross, one of Frank Bough’s acolytes on the BBC’s pioneering Breakfast Time, put it, ‘television in the morning was outrageous – it was just decadence beyond belief.’
Judging by the opening salvo from Good Morning Britain, ITV’s latest revamp to the redeye slot kicking off this week, today’s state-of-the-art thinking is that it should be everything at once, presented with almost intimidating professionalism. The big news in the pre-launch build-up was ITV’s hiring of Susanna Reid on a £400,000 contract, spiriting her away from homely beekeeper Bill Turnbull and chums over on BBC One’s Breakfast, but nobody had prepared us for the new show’s four-anchor impact.
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