Good Morning Britain - 2015 Refresh/Tweaks

The interview was indeed done down-the-line. Piers then travelled to the US at some points afterwards (I'd imagine because he is now on his Easter holidays), and recorded his pieces to camera and voice-overs there.

The full interview programme seems to have been a bit of a last-minute addition, as up until mid-week, Benidorm was scheduled for 10.15pm on Friday (on STV at least).

Piers is currently in America on holiday, so that's when the short links were filmed. On Wednesday and Thursday's GMB, we just saw Piers in the studio and Trump in America. Obviously when ITV decided to replace Benidorm, they needed some voice overs and introductions. If Piers had already left for his holidays, then obviously that could only be done in America.

Anyway, despite the fact I don't support Trump, and the pair are obviously friends, it was an engaging interview.

Same here found it an interesting watch.

Interesting to note, that we are coming up to the two year anniversary of GMB, and so many of the GMB's presenters contracts will be running out at the end of April (as the rumours previously suggested). Also, it was rumoured Piers only signed an initial 6-month deal. Could ITV be trying out new presenters?

Personally, I think Mark Austin and Ranvir would make a great presenting duo and would also attract many viewers to ITV. As they are part of the ITV News team, you know you are going to get a show with a central focus on news. It can't be said currently when it seems very amateur e.g. most of the news bulletins have some sort of story about the birth of a monkey at Chester Zoo.

If ITV News (ITN) and ITV Breakfast had a stronger link, sharing news facilities, it would go into making a much better show. I think it's time that ITV handed over the breakfast slot to ITN.

Such light stories are an essential part of a breakfast news programme. No average viewer wants death, destruction and endless politics in the morning. As long as they don't lead on that story, it's far from amateur of them at all.

Did you ever see the Channel 4 Daily?

ITV have tried the hard news format, and it didn't work. However, going back to the GMTV format wasn't a good idea either.

Question is - could they afford to? Don't forget that ITV don't own ITN and so would have to commission ITN or renegotiate their current news provision deal to include GMB as well as the other ITV Network News bulletins.

I may sound like a broken record but for me the original GMB was good. It had news at the heart of it but still covered showbiz and lighter stories.
Recently news has taken over more of GMB rather than life stories (A good thing in my eyes, leave the life stories for Lorraine and This Morning), and they can handle it very well as seen last week. The original theme should return IMO. As seen when looking at early GMB the theme added an authoritative approach when delivering the headlines but could also cover lighter stories where as the current theme does the latter but not the former. I'd love to see them cut down the pre titles to fit with the music and just read the headlines rather than explaining about all of their live reporters. Looking back on early GMB and the Jan 2015 refresh I'd like to see them treated as separate programmes. They could easily shift the Lorraine 'coming up' to 8:25 and then have final headlines and weather before closing the programme properly.

It seems to be a common misinterpretation that Channel 4 Daily was wholly produced by ITN. It wasn't. It was a collaboration of producers.

ITN did the news and effectively the continuity. And it made Breakfast News look dynamic

Reminder that today marks the beginning of Jeremy Kyle's five-show stint on GMB.