TV-am Promo (21 May 1986)

[@97channel]

Pushing the news aspect hard, at this point. Only just at the point where it was starting to recover from the cutbacks which led to the infamous poor coverage of the Brighton Hotel Bombing. Bruce Gyngell had his arm forced up his back by the IBA to make significant improvements or face possible licence revocation. TV-am was actually a good format. Good Morning Britain struck a good balance between news and lighter content. It's a shame we don't have lighter breakfast telly today, the news heavy modern-day namesake GMB is too spikey and hard to digest for that time of day. TV-am was able to go harder or softer on the news content, as the day's stories dictated. Yes, news is important. Of course it is. But it's not always wanted in such high doses. I'm confident that a TV-am clone, today, would be a serious force in the ratings.

[@johnking5174]

The success of TV-am by 1986 led to the BBC Breakfast Time programme being reformatted in November of 1986. From Jan 1983 until Nov 1986 it was the warm and welcoming magazine type show, but after TV-am started thumping them in the ratings, the BBC had enough and decided to offer an alternative, a more news driven version, and sadly Frank Bough's jumpers and the comfy sofa were ditched for news and politics at breakfast time.