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[RyoG]

Ceefax wasn't immune to a page number mess-up either!

https://youtu.be/UubwkKdv91c

[Steve Williams]

The first programme to come from TC1 in 1991 after its refurbishment was Blue Peter, so of course they took full advantage of the opportunity to show the studio off

I do vividly remember this episode, I was fascinated by the whole thing. I definitely remember the bit where Diane shows off the visual effects on the Charisma, because when I was doing my made-up TV shows under my breath in the school playground (come on, we've all done it), I remember imagining all kinds of graphical frippery based on those effects. That episode and the episode of Going Live twelve months earlier that they did from a cross-channel ferry were hugely influential to me and all the programmes on my own channel STV were heavy on the pointless outside broadcasts and ludicrous visual effects.

[James2001]

You pretty much never see those sorts of picture effects on TV any more. They were everywhere in the 80s and early 90s, but they look stupidly dated now.

[Benriggers]

CBBC at Noel's House anyone?

[Steve Williams]

You pretty much never see those sorts of picture effects on TV any more. They were everywhere in the 80s and early 90s, but they look stupidly dated now.

I love The Day Today dearly, it's probably my favourite ever programme, though it is a shame that it made visual effects look so ridiculous nobody ever used them again after that.

[Roger Darthwell]

No idea if this is the right place for it, but this recording of Sky Channel from August 1988 has got The Times Headline News, which I presume was Sky's news programme for the channel before Sky News was launched (I never knew that Sky Channel had a news programme made by The Times!), it's quite rare (it's at 10:12 mark in the video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npmbubiNBwQ

[Neil Jones]

Well The Times had been bought by Murdoch a few years earlier (the purchase, it is claimed, saved both The Times and its Sunday equivalent, as the previous company was in financial difficulty), and about six weeks or so before that video if the date is accurate, Murdoch had already said he was wanting to expand the channel offerings, which included what became Sky News and Sky One.

[The TV-Fan On TV-Live]

Some Carlton Central continuity from the 27th of June 2001, exiting a James Bond film to News at Ten.

https://youtu.be/XyV2fCW1Sbs

[Roger Darthwell]

A start up from JSTV Japan Satellite Television dating back to 1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3jLO2np248

[ChipperBird]

Thanks Steve - Kee lasted longer than I thought. I can't imagine he was impressed with Daybreak being ditched.

Well, the initial plan was for him to do the main Good Morning Britain programme at various points like all the others, and in the TV Times in the week of launch he talks about how he was quite looking forward to doing all the cookery and lifestyle stuff, but it never happened in the end.

If the YT comment suggesting Kee was going to try and do a Panorama type thing at the crack of dawn was true I think that would of gone down even *worse* than actual Daybreak. Watching the first day it's more interesting to see how he'll actually stall for time considering he only had so much news to work with and no highlights package or support from an established news agency. But very boring if you didn't know why he had to present like that.

I'ld love to know who went and nixed the whole cookery and lifestyle section before launch mind as they should of proper kicked themselves a bunch for suggesting it. There was certainly space for news that time of the day, but the assumption that people would want highbrow content all the time in the morning I think reflects how out of touch the presenters and launch team were.

As I say, all five were contracted to do six months of the year so there'd be different combinations of the hosts all through the year, with Frost and Ford for February, and Ford and Rippon for March, except that fell apart pretty sharpish with Nick Owen presenting with Rippon in April (where there were loads of complaints she was rude and patronising to him) until she went and Lynda Berry joined him. Seems a bizarre idea anyway, in terms of keeping the show consistent, but it's another example of their rather idiosyncratic ideas that illustrated that it was a bunch of people used to being on television playing at making it. I mean, Robert Kee doing Good Morning Britain is the perfect example, that's just them being self-indulgent and thinking it would be a daft laugh, and never mind the viewers. And you can't imagine some of them still getting up at 4am after a few months, with their money.

It's funny really as to the average person doing 6 months and then having a nice old break with a nice wad of cash in the bank would be a proper luxury for the average worker of the day I imagine. Plus the presenters being the bosses just meant ego also got in the way of fine tuning everything. Can't really tell the boss what to do, and even if you did they basically have the clout to ignore it and let things get worse (which it did)

Kind of reminds me of Daybreak V1 when there was all that hooplah about how getting Adrian Chiles & Christine Bleakley was going to be this big win for the new show only for it to reveal the match up really didn't work that well when transplanted over from the One Show. I remember watching the launch and the graphics package and all was neat but the whole 7 minutes of news every half-hour thing just killed any momentum it could of had.

EDIT felt a bit mean not posting a clip to the thread - all this breakfast talk reminded me of RI:SE which had a rough time of it as well and found a clip uploaded a year ago. Is it me or is that side wall with the words basically the script of the "Dead Parrot" sketch from Monty Python pasted up on the wall? Feels a bit at odds with the youth presenter vibe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-QxaUnP54k

[JetixFann450]

EDIT felt a bit mean not posting a clip to the thread - all this breakfast talk reminded me of RI:SE which had a rough time of it as well and found a clip uploaded a year ago. Is it me or is that side wall with the words basically the script of the "Dead Parrot" sketch from Monty Python pasted up on the wall? Feels a bit at odds with the youth presenter vibe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-QxaUnP54k

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like a breakfast show like RI:SE would probably be more interesting than an industrial news program every morning on every channel. It's no Big Breakfast, obviously, but you can tell they were experimenting and it wasn't just "NEWS, NEWS, NEWS" every few minutes.

I get that no one liked RI:SE in its early years, but even during it's last years, you could tell they were trying to bring back the vibes of the Big Breakfast as best as they could with the youth presenters.

[nwtv2003]

I was probably in the minority and I actually liked RI:SE v1.0 that was produced at Sky. Yes it wasn’t the liveliest programme but it did the job. Their motto was the 3 B’s; Bin Laden, Beckham and Britney. It certainly did that, but it felt so out of place after the Big Breakfast and I think it left a lot of people disappointed, but I’d give something to see a show like that breakfast time now.

[Brekkie]

RI:SE just wasn't a suitable replacement for The Big Breakfast but I do think GMB actually owes a bit to it.

[Neil Jones]

RI:SE just wasn't a suitable replacement for The Big Breakfast but I do think GMB actually owes a bit to it.

Pretty much most breakfast formats on the commercial networks owe themselves to what went before.

So for Channel 4 they went back to the double door format pioneered on the Big Breakfast, and for ITV they just went back to the later TV-am magazine style format (not the stuffy rigid and boring format they launched with). Most of what followed did pretty much the same thing really, including GMTV who threw the TV-am format out the window and then were later seen bringing it back in piece by piece through the back door.

[James2001]

In the sense that they'd basically reverted to TV-am by the spring. Even getting rid of the original set and bringing in one that looked like TV-AM's after only around 3 or 4 months.