'What cuts to GMB and Loose Women mean for the struggling TV industry'

Yahoo

22-05-2025

Daytime television is usually where you watch people discuss everyone else. At the moment, however, it feels like the opposite is true.
Earlier this week ITV announced swingeing cuts to its daytime schedule. From January 2026, Loose Women and Lorraine will air only 30 weeks a year, compared to the all-year round schedule we're used to.
Lorraine will be cut back from 60 minutes to 30 minutes an episode, with Good Morning Britain expanding into its time slot, while GMB itself will lose its independence and be produced by the ITN news division instead of ITV Studios.
Viewers will also notice changes in the way that these shows look and feel too, with all of ITV's daytime programmes moving out of Television Centre. The White City studio has been the home of ITV daytime programmes since the BBC moved out over a decade ago. Reportedly, more than 220 out of 440 staff who work across all of these programmes will lose their jobs. It's a very tough situation for those who work there.
These changes also represent how much television itself is changing because of our changing viewing habits. Linear television growth has seen a record decline in viewership for a second consecutive year, according to Ofcom.
Interestingly, there have been declines with older viewers too, who until now had remained loyal to traditional television because it has been part of their routine.
At the same time, the streaming service ITVX has continued to grow (up 14% in monthly active users according to its annual report) as online advertising continues to grow with it, while traditional advertising on television continues to remain sluggish.
The types of shows that we watch on streaming tend to be very different from the ones we watch on traditional television too. Our viewing habits on streaming tends to favour dramas, documentary series and reality shows, which we can catch up on at any point during the day.
Daytime chat and discussion tends to only be watched live, when it happens. Traditional television also continues to do well with breakfast television news shows and quiz shows, hence the upcoming launch of ITV Quiz, a whole dedicated channel to just that.
That's why, sadly, there feels a sense of inevitability with what is happening with these cutbacks during daytime. Yet it is also important not to get too ahead of ourselves. Daytime television will continue to run for many years to come. Television channels are not going anytime soon either, as they serve as a shop window for shows you watch online.
It is also pretty easy to be snobbish about daytime television, particularly when at first glance it can feel like presenters walking around cold empty flats. I was a judge for the daytime category at the Bafta Television Awards early this year and was impressed by the quality and the ambition of shows that were nominated, everything from House of Games to Morning Live. It has a public service ethos at its heart, covering everything from the dangers of online scams and fraud, to the recent Loose Women campaign on domestic abuse.
While it's important to adjust television to our changing viewing habits, making changes too quickly and too recklessly will naturally affect shows elsewhere in the schedule. Daytime serves an important part of the television ecosystem; training ground for many shows that then do well in primetime, such as Repair Shop.
It also serves as a training ground for those behind the camera, but also presenters too, who use these shows as a stepping stone to bigger shows in the evening schedules, with Alison Hammond's rise to Bake Off just one such example.
There's also no avoiding the fact that at a time when many within the TV industry are already out of work, the news of such redundancies are another crushing blow.