Wake Up ! It's TV-AM

First there was the BBC's Breakfast Time show which launched at the start of 1983, and much to TV-AM's dismay (they were due on air shortly) it was not the serious news programme some thought it might have been, but was a direct competitor which helped to hit TV-AM's initial viewing figures badly. Later on Breakfast Time was scrapped and replaced with a more serious Breakfast News format. The Breakfast Time intro can be found as a Quicktime movie in Richard Bell's TV Zone (see the Resources and Links section).

TV-AM followed swiftly afterwards, launched with a barrage of publicity on 1st February 1983. It featured a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar presenters (David Frost being the key figure) and had a 'bright and breezy' approach to waking the nation up in the morning. Expectations were set high for the new service, but in reality there were several unanswered questions; most notably just how many people in the UK were prepared to watch television instead of listening to the radio at that time of day.

The show's title 'Good Morning Britain' deliberately echoed the similar US programme 'Good Morning America', and the British show had much in common with its American counterpart, such as the use of an on-screen clock, and the use of a caption to tell viewers what was to follow the commercial break.

After the commercial break had finished, this caption was shown, which also features the on-screen clock (showing ten past nine, in the bottom-right hand corner). By April TV-AM's future looked bleak - viewing figures had plummeted to about 100,000, partly courtesy of Breakfast Time (anyone remember Russell Grant's horoscopes?) So Greg Dyke was brought in from London Weekend Television to try and improve things - David Frost was replaced by Nick Owen and TV-AM went downmarket, successfully reversing the drop.

At the time there was a craze among tabloid newspapers for running bingo competitions, so a bright idea was to tell the viewers what the day's numbers were so they didn't have to buy the newspaper. Occassionally the numbers were misread, though the mistakes were corrected ! Nick Owen had to dress up in a beefeater's outfit and blow a trumpet to introduce this part of the programme !

Roland Rat was also introduced as part of the April shake-up; its creator (Anne Wood) was (much later) responsible for creating the Teletubbies... The character proved to be very popular; rat mania even spawned two UK Top 40 records in 1983/4 - Rat Rapping and Love Me Tender. Anne Diamond also had to work alongside 'Roland Rat Superstar' (as he was also modestly known as) which must have been a tough act to keep up with !

The weather forecast was presented by Commander Philpott, whose style was certainly different from the competition - come to think of it anything else past or present ! 'Stiff upper lip British' was perhaps the best way to describe the Commander's technique.

This caption was shown at the end of the programme, with one egg cup added to the picture for each year since 1983 (1984 = two egg cups displayed, etc.), though in later years only a few of the cups actually appeared in the caption. TV-AM was a programme contractor in its own right, and was independent of the other companies that formed the ITV network.

ITN provided the news for the service for many years, but later on the news was provided by Rupert Murdoch's Sky News until TV-AM's demise at the end of 1992.

TV-AM were among the losers when the ITV broadcasting franchises were reviewed in 1991, so from the 1st January 1993 TV-AM was replaced by GMTV. This picture was the very last to be transmitted by TV-AM; the colour of the main scene was faded moments before the picture faded abruptly. An era had come to an end. You can see this historic moment in a RealVideo clip in the Links and Resources section.

Don some wellies for the BBC Garden !