RB
I wasn't sorry to see the Big Breakfast depart (albeit 2-3 years after it should have done) but RI:SE was pretty much stillborn from day one.
Weak presenters, a repetitive structure, and a lack of identity.
The 2003 revamp saw very minor improvements but it was too late by then.
Weak presenters, a repetitive structure, and a lack of identity.
The 2003 revamp saw very minor improvements but it was too late by then.
BR
A show like The Big Breakfast, just like any other breakfast show, is generally best to work with to improve rather than replace as soon as it's in trouble. If they can get through the bad times the good times are worth it and had it continued a bit longer I'm sure it would have found success again, found failure again, and rinsed and repeated for 18 years.
RI:SE could just never escape the shadow of The Big Breakfast but I do think to be fair was probably ahead of it's time (and on the wrong channel), and on the wrong channel - there are elements there which you could see in GMB when it launched.
It is just a real shame C4 pretty much exited the breakfast show market once RI:SE was done. They had Freshly Squeezed which they probably could have done more with rather than letting it air pretty much without telling anyone, and E4 Music had "Wake up with..." which was a half decent alternative show if they had a decent guest for the week, but neither were of course landmark shows. Television really could have done with an alternative breakfast show over the last 10 years or so.
RI:SE could just never escape the shadow of The Big Breakfast but I do think to be fair was probably ahead of it's time (and on the wrong channel), and on the wrong channel - there are elements there which you could see in GMB when it launched.
It is just a real shame C4 pretty much exited the breakfast show market once RI:SE was done. They had Freshly Squeezed which they probably could have done more with rather than letting it air pretty much without telling anyone, and E4 Music had "Wake up with..." which was a half decent alternative show if they had a decent guest for the week, but neither were of course landmark shows. Television really could have done with an alternative breakfast show over the last 10 years or so.
FL
I hated the first incarnation as I didn’t think it gave any real alternative in the morning and felt it belonged somewhere on Sky. Then I was angry about the second incarnation because it was just a cheap BB rip-off, and I saw that as a bit of an insult to BB fans - C4 has treated the show with such disdain in its final year but then thought those same fans would flock back to a copycat show in the same slot.
I think I’m just about over it by now
I'm blatantly going to just throw a question out here without any prompting just because I'm curious about it, but what did long time BB viewers on here think of RI:SE?
I hated the first incarnation as I didn’t think it gave any real alternative in the morning and felt it belonged somewhere on Sky. Then I was angry about the second incarnation because it was just a cheap BB rip-off, and I saw that as a bit of an insult to BB fans - C4 has treated the show with such disdain in its final year but then thought those same fans would flock back to a copycat show in the same slot.
I think I’m just about over it by now
BA
Bananas
I'm blatantly going to just throw a question out here without any prompting just because I'm curious about it, but what did long time BB viewers on here think of RI:SE?
I quite liked version 2. There was precious little actual content, but the excellent Iain Lee still managed to carry the whole show.
SW
How long would you give The Big Breakfast, though? The fact Planet 24 had a year's notice of the axe, plus the right to make a pilot for a new version, would suggest they had plenty of time to turn it around, and never got anywhere near that. It had been in a bad way for a long time, and as Morning Glory (the book, not the show) points out, that includes under Johnny Vaughan because in 2000 it was absolutely the fifth out of five channels in terms of ratings, and C4 got in the papers for a memo being circulated around asking for ideas to revitalise tired and ageing brands on the channel, with the Big Breakfast cited alongside Brookside and TFI Friday.
I did watch it when Vaughan did it, and enjoyed it, but it was never a big rater, and in a way he probably turned off as many people as he attracted. Certainly towards the end of his spell it was absolutely rammed with in-jokes, it was totally self-indulgent. That was alright if you watched it every day and bought into it, as people did, but for casual viewers great swathes of it was totally impenetrable. Look at the Wikipedia page for an example, endless paragraphs of intricate detail about Wonga and the like.
As for the revamp, it's a bit like Live and Kicking around the same time, when they were constantly revamping that. The idea was that it was a big brand that had been successfully revamped once and they could presumably do it again, but it also meant that both shows were endlessly compared to the previous incarnation, and also it's hard to convince lapsed viewers that anything has changed. So eventually you do have to start from scratch just to shake off the legacy of its earlier episodes.
As for RI:SE, that is a great example of how Sky have always been quicker to say what a programme or channel isn't than what it actually is. They spent so long saying what it wasn't going to be - ie, not The Big Breakfast - that they never actually got round to actually what it was, and when it went on air, absolutely nothing happened on it. It was a show that existed for the sake of it, for the sake of C4 having a breakfast show, for the sake of doing something that wasn't The Big Breakfast, for the sake of giving Sky a window on FTA TV, but never had any specific editorial or creative vision behind it. Absolutely a show designed by committee.
The idea of a younger-skewing breakfast show to go up against Breakfast and GMTV, as was, isn't a bad one, but it's a very small audience to go for and one that is also very well catered for on the radio. And the original RI:SE was very bad, I think the presenters had a lot to do with it as well, Mark Durden-Smith was terrible, he came across as massively smug and unlikeable. I don't mind Colin Murray these days but he was absolutely an acquired taste, and those two probably did the most to turn people off. They just talked and talked and talked. There was a lot of interesting talent attached to some of the pilots - Adrian Chiles, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Christopher Price (of course he'd died by the time it started, alas) - so it's a bit of a shame that the final show ended up with Durden-Smith and Murray whose banter endlessly fell flat and who dominated the programme from start to finish.
The thing that really summed up RI:SE for me came on the first show, when they did the weather, and every time they mentioned Cardiff, they said "here's the weather for Cardiff, if you're going to see Kylie there tonight", as if that was the only reason anyone would ever want to go to Cardiff, and it was the most exciting thing ever to happen there. Made it look massively London-centric and patronising.
A show like The Big Breakfast, just like any other breakfast show, is generally best to work with to improve rather than replace as soon as it's in trouble. If they can get through the bad times the good times are worth it and had it continued a bit longer I'm sure it would have found success again, found failure again, and rinsed and repeated for 18 years.
RI:SE could just never escape the shadow of The Big Breakfast but I do think to be fair was probably ahead of it's time (and on the wrong channel), and on the wrong channel - there are elements there which you could see in GMB when it launched.
RI:SE could just never escape the shadow of The Big Breakfast but I do think to be fair was probably ahead of it's time (and on the wrong channel), and on the wrong channel - there are elements there which you could see in GMB when it launched.
How long would you give The Big Breakfast, though? The fact Planet 24 had a year's notice of the axe, plus the right to make a pilot for a new version, would suggest they had plenty of time to turn it around, and never got anywhere near that. It had been in a bad way for a long time, and as Morning Glory (the book, not the show) points out, that includes under Johnny Vaughan because in 2000 it was absolutely the fifth out of five channels in terms of ratings, and C4 got in the papers for a memo being circulated around asking for ideas to revitalise tired and ageing brands on the channel, with the Big Breakfast cited alongside Brookside and TFI Friday.
I did watch it when Vaughan did it, and enjoyed it, but it was never a big rater, and in a way he probably turned off as many people as he attracted. Certainly towards the end of his spell it was absolutely rammed with in-jokes, it was totally self-indulgent. That was alright if you watched it every day and bought into it, as people did, but for casual viewers great swathes of it was totally impenetrable. Look at the Wikipedia page for an example, endless paragraphs of intricate detail about Wonga and the like.
As for the revamp, it's a bit like Live and Kicking around the same time, when they were constantly revamping that. The idea was that it was a big brand that had been successfully revamped once and they could presumably do it again, but it also meant that both shows were endlessly compared to the previous incarnation, and also it's hard to convince lapsed viewers that anything has changed. So eventually you do have to start from scratch just to shake off the legacy of its earlier episodes.
As for RI:SE, that is a great example of how Sky have always been quicker to say what a programme or channel isn't than what it actually is. They spent so long saying what it wasn't going to be - ie, not The Big Breakfast - that they never actually got round to actually what it was, and when it went on air, absolutely nothing happened on it. It was a show that existed for the sake of it, for the sake of C4 having a breakfast show, for the sake of doing something that wasn't The Big Breakfast, for the sake of giving Sky a window on FTA TV, but never had any specific editorial or creative vision behind it. Absolutely a show designed by committee.
The idea of a younger-skewing breakfast show to go up against Breakfast and GMTV, as was, isn't a bad one, but it's a very small audience to go for and one that is also very well catered for on the radio. And the original RI:SE was very bad, I think the presenters had a lot to do with it as well, Mark Durden-Smith was terrible, he came across as massively smug and unlikeable. I don't mind Colin Murray these days but he was absolutely an acquired taste, and those two probably did the most to turn people off. They just talked and talked and talked. There was a lot of interesting talent attached to some of the pilots - Adrian Chiles, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Christopher Price (of course he'd died by the time it started, alas) - so it's a bit of a shame that the final show ended up with Durden-Smith and Murray whose banter endlessly fell flat and who dominated the programme from start to finish.
The thing that really summed up RI:SE for me came on the first show, when they did the weather, and every time they mentioned Cardiff, they said "here's the weather for Cardiff, if you're going to see Kylie there tonight", as if that was the only reason anyone would ever want to go to Cardiff, and it was the most exciting thing ever to happen there. Made it look massively London-centric and patronising.
IN
RI:SE v1 was hideously smug and empty
RI:SE v1.5, which lasted only a few weeks at the end of 2002 and had just Edith Bowman and Mark Durden-Smith presenting around a much smaller desk, was even worse.
RI:SE v2 was pretty good but it was never going to work with that brand as the previous RI:SE had done a pretty good job alienating the remaining BB audience and appealed to almost nobody. The 'two chairs in front of a window' presentation style did seem somewhat familiar.
RI:SE v1.5, which lasted only a few weeks at the end of 2002 and had just Edith Bowman and Mark Durden-Smith presenting around a much smaller desk, was even worse.
RI:SE v2 was pretty good but it was never going to work with that brand as the previous RI:SE had done a pretty good job alienating the remaining BB audience and appealed to almost nobody. The 'two chairs in front of a window' presentation style did seem somewhat familiar.
SW
And of course within months they did have a whooping crew, and they would have bands in the studio which the hosts would self-consciously dance to.
Mark Durden Smith took a dig at the BB in the first few seconds "No puppetts, no whooping crew members and no dancing girls" I did like the music they eventually added to the in and out of break stings a few months later.
And of course within months they did have a whooping crew, and they would have bands in the studio which the hosts would self-consciously dance to.
JB
It really depends who was presenting! I always thought it was a mistake to bring back the Friday song in the Richard Bacon/Amanda Bryam era. A step back too far. It was so intrinsically Johnny and Denise/Liza (Kelly Brook always struggled to make it work) that anyone else doing it felt like an imitation and it never really worked.
I agree. In 2001 there wasn't the same energy with the song like there was in 1997-2001. Richard Bacon would often sing softly and stumble on the words singing out of time with Amanda. You couldn't hear a lot of people singing like you could in the JV days and the saxophone would drown out Harry on the piano.
There was an occasion in January 2000 where Gail Porter shouts out to Richard "Go on Richard" to encourage him to sing, this causes everyone to laugh through the rest of the second verse and the song, it was his first time doing the song I believe JV was off on holiday.
Can any long term fans remember how the Friday Song was introduced? Did JV and Denise plug it on the first week or was it one of those things that just happened?
I didn't think Vanessa features on The Bigger Breakfast.
Back to the Friday Song - on the one hand how awkward would that have been over recent weeks. On the other how uplifting may it have been.
Back to the Friday Song - on the one hand how awkward would that have been over recent weeks. On the other how uplifting may it have been.
It really depends who was presenting! I always thought it was a mistake to bring back the Friday song in the Richard Bacon/Amanda Bryam era. A step back too far. It was so intrinsically Johnny and Denise/Liza (Kelly Brook always struggled to make it work) that anyone else doing it felt like an imitation and it never really worked.
I agree. In 2001 there wasn't the same energy with the song like there was in 1997-2001. Richard Bacon would often sing softly and stumble on the words singing out of time with Amanda. You couldn't hear a lot of people singing like you could in the JV days and the saxophone would drown out Harry on the piano.
There was an occasion in January 2000 where Gail Porter shouts out to Richard "Go on Richard" to encourage him to sing, this causes everyone to laugh through the rest of the second verse and the song, it was his first time doing the song I believe JV was off on holiday.
Can any long term fans remember how the Friday Song was introduced? Did JV and Denise plug it on the first week or was it one of those things that just happened?