How Daybreak's multi-million pound TV marriage hit the rocks

By Alison Boshoff


The show is barely a year old, but already viewers are wondering: has there ever been one as disaster-prone as Daybreak?

Rising from the ashes of GMTV, it has followed a simple rule: everything which can go wrong will.

Now, with the ‘double beheading’ of its presenters, Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley, who have been sacked after ratings plummeted to just half those of rival show BBC Breakfast, there can be no doubt how far the programme has sunk.

Axed: Adrian Chiles (left) and Christine Bleakley will be replaced as hosts of the ITV daytime show


‘I don’t think there’s another show on ITV doing so badly,’ said a senior executive yesterday.

The show made its debut last September and was immediately blighted by problems with the set, which used the London skyline as a background.

Lighting the city’s panorama proved a nightmare and ITV had to pay to floodlight St Paul’s Cathedral from 6am, so they weren’t broadcasting a view of inky blackness to the nation.

Shortly after the show went live, the green room was infested with fleas and had to be fumigated — twice — after pets appeared on the programme.

Although big-name guests such as David Cameron and Tony Blair initially graced the sofa, they were soon replaced by C-listers, and the mood in the studio became increasingly tense.

One member of the team said yesterday: ‘The atmosphere is just vile. A lot of us were here in the GMTV days, and it’s far worse than that.’

Dismissed: Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley are set to leave Daybreak within weeks


No one has seemed more unhappy than the presenters themselves. The much-hyped chemistry between Adrian Chiles and his sidekick Christine Bleakley — formerly a successful duo on BBC1’s The One Show — failed to materialise, with viewers deserting the programme in droves.

Ratings fell from the 900,000 that GMTV had attracted to a low last January of just 300,000. Over on the BBC, the newsier Breakfast show manages 1.5 million viewers daily.

Though axed for being unpopular, at its height GMTV regularly attracted two million viewers with its formula of news, human interest stories, cookery and health features and competitions.

Daybreak’s failings are highlighted by the fact that hordes of viewers switch to ITV when Chiles and Bleakley go off air at 8.30am, tuning into veteran presenter Lorraine Kelly’s show — which sometimes boasts double Daybreak’s ratings.

Relations between Bleakley and Chiles are said to have soured, with some blaming their fractious real-life relationship for their lack of charisma on the show.

On the rise: The Lorraine Kelly show has often eclipsed Daybreak's rating


One source says: ‘The chemistry between Adrian and Christine isn’t there on screen because it isn’t there off-screen either. At the moment they are barely talking to each other, and he is just permanently in a sulk.

‘It’s not been great between them since the beginning, which we thought was nerves, but as time has gone on their dynamic has really changed.’

The gloss began to come off the partnership even before their much-publicised transfer to ITV, and under the stress of presenting an over-hyped and under-performing show, it has declined rapidly.

There was a time when Chiles — who separated from his wife, radio presenter Jane Garvey, in 2009 — doted on Christine, giving her lifts and sharing after-work curries with her.

Rumours of an affair were rife, although the pair maintained they were just friends.

Then, as Christine’s romance with Chelsea footballer Frank Lampard developed, the TV pair’s friendship began to cool.

Yet when Chiles, 44, left the BBC after a debate over his hours for a thumping £5 million four-year deal with ITV, Christine was persuaded to follow him on her own £4 million, three-year deal.

But it was obvious from the start Chiles was not cut out for the bright-and-breezy world of breakfast TV.

‘I don’t think there’s a more gruelling show than a breakfast show,’ he complained. ‘It’s psychologically tough. You wake up at 3.45am, and that’s the best you feel all day.’

Better days: Chiles and Bleakley made the switch to ITV following a successful stint on the BBC's One Show


Christine, meanwhile, didn’t seem to strike a chord with the core audience, many of whom are housewives. Perhaps, with her perma-tan, enormous engagement ring and multi-millionaire boyfriend, they found her hard to relate to. Some complained that she was a ‘giggling airhead’.

News that the presenters were to be axed became public on Saturday, but I’m told they were informed by their bosses in early September.

Although she mustered a smile this morning, Bleakley is clearly in high dudgeon.

Tweeting on Saturday she wrote: ‘Morning, what a lovely headline to wake up to. My sarcasm comes across in this tweet I hope.’

She’s since deleted the tweet — she is to co-present Dancing On Ice with Phillip Schofield, and knows better than to bad-mouth her ITV bosses quite so publicly.

Adrian was quoted as saying he is ‘angry and acutely embarrassed’ over the way his sacking has become public. ‘Dark forces have leaked it for their own ends,’ he raged on Sunday.

(His agents — perhaps thinking about his work presenting the Champions League football for ITV — now insist he said no such thing.)

The promise was that Chiles and Bleakley would be allowed to serve out their notice with dignity while replacements were quietly found, and then given other projects to do.

Filling in: Eamonn Holmes (left) and Natasha Kaplinsky are favourites to replace Chiles and Bleakley on the Daybreak sofa


ITV executives began to look into what it would cost them to get rid of them as early as June — and discovered the channel would be £4 million poorer as a result.

But, astonishingly, they weren’t deterred. It seems Daybreak has been such a disaster it’s costing ITV far more than that in lost advertising revenue — one senior ITV figure estimates it’s losing £10 million a year.

Chiles and Bleakley were then given Fridays off, and ITV looked closely at Dan Lobb and Kate Garraway, who stood in for them, and at how they were performing.

However, Peter McHugh, who ran GMTV from 1993 to 2010, says it is wrong to lay responsibility for the debacle solely at the feet of the presenters. ‘It’s unfair to blame them completely,’ he explains.

‘A good presenter cannot save a bad show, it’s as simple as that.’

Bookmakers have Eamonn Holmes down as favourite to take over from Chiles, with former BBC newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky tipped to be his likely co-host.

However, Holmes is on a big-money deal at Sky, while some believe housewives in the audience will struggle to relate to the glamorous Kaplinsky.

Producers want to change the show itself, not just the talking heads on the sofa. The aim is to create something more American in style — news-led but offering an alternative to the more serious BBC Breakfast.

They want it to be fun. An element that, alas, has been in short supply at Daybreak.



source:dailymail