EXCLUSIVE Loose Women ready to AXE celebrity guests after ITV shake-up amid growing fears the show could be cancelled within a year
The long-running series usually welcomes a host of celebrities onto the panel to promote upcoming projects and have had the likes of Naomi Campbell, Elizabeth Hurley, Joan Collins, and even former Prime Minster Rishi Sunak appear.
But according to insiders, once ITV 's budget cuts come into effect in January, Loose Women will no longer have A-list guests in the studio, and the broadcast is planned to only consist of the panel debating newsworthy topics from the week.
Now, TV sources have claimed that Loose Women is predicted to be completely cancelled within the year, as viewing figures are expected to drop once the show's quality is reduced.
It comes after MailOnline revealed that the show has axed their studio audience, an integral part to the programme, which caused upset among several members of the long-standing cast including Nadia Sawalha, Ruth Langsford and Coleen Nolan.
In May, ITV announced that Lorraine and Loose Women will only air for 30 weeks a year rather than 52, resulting in more than 220 of 440 staff involved losing their jobs.
A TV source revealed: 'Not having guests is a big blow for both the presenters and viewers at home.
'The guests are often one of the highest parts of the show, so it feels like a very strange decision to cut them altogether. Instead, the focus will be on guests for Lorraine and This Morning.
'Behind the scenes the presenters are really upset because they love having guests on and feel they offer a different type of interview to the other daytime shows.
'Firstly, there are four hosts conducting the conversation and secondly, they use their interviews to discuss female focused issues, something shows like This Morning don't do as often.
'In recent years, Loose Women have welcomed Elizabeth Hurley, Joan Collins and have down sit down one on one interviews with Janet Jackson and Naomi Campbell who all chose to do their chats with the show because they love it.
'It's a real shame that in January, the programme will become a shell of its former self before it is inevitably cancelled altogether.'
MailOnline understands that the reason for Loose Women axing celebrity guests is because there simply won't be enough manpower to host visitors and their decision has been to prioritise Lorraine and This Morning, so by default, the panel show will ultimately miss out.
An ITV spokesperson added: 'The Loose Women team is still working on the show and its content for next year.'
Former Prime Minster Rishi Sunak faced a gruelling from the Loose Women in May 2024 who probed on topics from sex education in schools to pensions and housing
It comes after ITV announced dramatic budget cuts to their daytime schedule from halving Lorraine to 30 minutes and only airing the show during school term times to cutting Loose Women's output to 30 weeks a year.
Under the plans, production of Good Morning Britain will be handled by a dedicated team at ITV News, which is made by ITN, the company that also holds the contracts to produce the news for Channel 4 and Channel 5.
ITV Studios will continue to produce Lorraine, Loose Women and This Morning but is consulting on a plan to reduce the three separate teams to one, with the latter being prioritised in terms of their celebrity bookings.
Loose Women panelist Nadia expressed her sadness over the show scrapping a live studio audience and as a result, her close friend and colleague, Lee Peart, who works as a warm-up artist, losing his job.
She said: 'I am totally devastated by this fact, I can't get over it at all. Not only because the audience is so important for the show, but also my dear friend Lee who I work with every day.'
Nadia also vocalised her feelings over the 'brutal' cuts to Loose Women as she explained how tough the May announcement had been for staff.
She explained: 'This show has been highly successful for 25 years, more actually now, it is such a clear brand...
'The brutality of the world... what a lot of people don't realise is that we're self-employed, every contract is a new contract, I could be let go tomorrow or in five years, we're not employees.
'What's been absolutely brutal over the last week and honestly, I feel tearful about it is that hundreds of people are going to be made redundant out of the blue, these are people behind the scenes, that support us in every way.
'It's the way of the world, inflation is insane, cuts have to be made... a lot of my friends and colleagues on this show and at ITV have been there for decades, and I can't tell you how upsetting it was to see people walking around numb with shock and fear about what they were going to do.'
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