THE seventies and early eighties had massive restrictions on television broadcasting hours. For example, ITV could only broadcast between 9:25am to 1am each day, with the downtime hours being taken up by a test card with the continuous deafening tone. That changed in 1979, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) ruled that breakfast television should come to ITV. The following year, several companies showed interest and in the end, a nine-year license was awarded to TV-AM.
A purpose-built studio was used on the London borough of Camden along the banks of the Regent’s Canal. Broadcasting was initially due to start in the summer of 1983 but was brought forward in response to the surprise announcement of a rival breakfast service from BBC. On February 1, 1983, TV-AM took to the airwaves with “The Famous Five” consisting of Michael Parkinson, Anna Ford, Angela Rippon, Robert Kee and David Frost. The programme was split into two separate blocks; Daybreak, ran for the first hour of the programme and concentrated on the morning’s news headlines whilst Good Morning Britain was a mixture of news along with special reports and interviews with politicians and celebrities.
Just months into its birth and cracks immediately began to appear. Peter Jay, the man behind the company was forced out when he refused to make any snap changes to early criticism. Jonathan Aitken took over and fired Angela Rippon and Anna Ford, replacing them with Anne Diamond and Nick Owen. He also axed the Daybreak strand and Good Morning Britain ran throughout the programme’s duration. Aitken also began to target younger viewers with children input, most notably by introducing Roland Rat, a puppet with an hip attitude and would often be seen throughout the summer months.
However, money was disappearing quickly and in 1984, TV-AM was on the verge of administration when it was purchased by a private Australian business investment. Bruce Gyngell took over the day-to-day running of the show and built on changes that had been made by Aitken before cost-cutting measures were forced. Gyngell decided to make weekends permanently for children’s programming, hence beginning the start of Wacaday and an array of popular cartoon series.
In 1987, the Unions began a mass dispute with the company, beginning a long and bitter strike. Gyngell worked extra hours to ensure that programming was affected at a minimal risk and somehow, this proved to be more popular than its normal schedule. Months of rowing finally resulted in Gyngell firing all of the striking staff and replacing them with non-union staff.
Come the 1990s and operating at a reduced staff rate, TV-AM was pulling in double the audience of BBC’s Breakfast News. This was mostly down to a more dedicated and core presenting team of Mike Morris, Richard Keys and Lorraine Kelly whilst Ulrika Jonsson began her career on the station as a weather forecaster. Under the 1990 Broadcasting Act, the ITV Breakfast Franchise went up for competition in 1991 and unlike before, cash bids were now the essence in maintaining or losing the license. With a bid of £14 million, TV-AM were confident of success, but the license went to Sunrise Television, a consortium of LWT, The Times and Disney UK, with a higher bid of £34.5 million. Bruce Gyngell responded by making an ill-mannered and heat of the moment comment to the press:
“I do not believe that Sunrise is a profitable company. I predict that Sunrise will go bankrupt by 1994. It’s an extraordinary decision!”
Eventually, TV-AM had to admit defeat and throughout 1992, they began selling off their shares in the company which included their news service being loaned out to Sky News for the year. December 31, 1992 saw TV-AM grace the screens for the final time and was replaced the following day by GMTV, having been forced to change its name from Sunrise after Sky threatened to sue.
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