when did morning tv start in the uk
Breakfast television After a nine-week trial-run in 1977 on the regional television station Yorkshire Television, the Independent Broadcasting Authority considered breakfast television so important that it created an entire franchise for the genre, becoming the only national independent television franchise other than news service ITN. This franchise was awarded to TV-am, a breakfast-television station. However, launch delays for TV-am allowed the BBC to launch its own morning programme, Breakfast Time on 17 January 1983. TV-am, with Good Morning Britain as its flagship programme, launched just two weeks later on 1 February. TV-am struggled at first because of a format that was considered to be stodgy and formal compared to the more relaxed magazine style of the BBC's Breakfast Time, and a reliance on advertising income from a timeslot during which people were not accustomed to watching television. However, it eventually flourished only to lose its licence in 1993, after being outbid by GMTV.