Breakfast Time
"Breakfast Time" was also the name of a U.S. show based on The Big Breakfast, hosted by Tom Bergeron. The 4 1/2 hour cable show was later moved to a 1/2 hour slot on Fox and renamed 'Fox After Breakfast', where it died a quiet death.Breakfast Time was
British television's first national
breakfast show, beating
ITV's
TV-am to the air by two weeks.
The show was revolutionary for the time. It mixed hard news with accessible features, creating a cosy feel, with sofas and bright colours â€" a stark contrast to the
Open University programming that had previously aired during that timeslot.
Frank Bough,
Selina Scott and
Nick Ross anchored the show, with regulars such as
Russell Grant (astrology) and
Diana Moran, also known as the "Green Goddess" due to the colour of her leotard (fitness).
Breakfast Time was an unexected succes. A rival commercial breakfast show, TV-am, was headed by a star line-up and almost everyone assumed it would trounce the BBC, but Breakfast Time got on the air first and the format and presenters proved supremely popular, forcing TV-am into melt-down. (Greg Dyke, much later to be Director General of the BBC, was called in to create low-cost filler material, the most famous part of which was called Roland the Rat - a far cry from TV-am's original mission to explain.)
One of Breakfast Time's most notable episodes was on the morning of the Brighton bombing when Nick Ross in the studio presented continuous live coverage of the IRA's attack at the Conservative Party conference in Sussex, including live pictures of the rescue of senior politicians such as Norman Tebbitt.
In time TV-am simply copied the BBC's approach, and
Breakfast Time became less sure-footed, losing some of its friendly accessibility as it strained to be more serious in tone. It adopted a news format in 1986, and in 1989 the show became
Breakfast News.
*
Frank Bough*
Selina Scott*
Sue Cook*
Debbie Greenwood*
Sally Magnusson*
John Mountford*
Jeremy Paxman*
Nick Ross*
Mike Smith*
John Stapleton*
Kirsty Wark*
Clips at TV Ark
