Good Morning Britain was TV-am

TV-am

TV-am was a breakfast television station that broadcast to the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 to 31 December 1992. It made history by being the first national operator of a commercial television franchise at breakfast-time , and broadcast every day of the week for most or all of the period...

's flagship breakfast television

Breakfast television

Breakfast television or morning show , is a type of infotainment television program, broadcast live in the morning...

 show throughout TV-am's time on air, broadcasting five days a week, initially from 7am until 9am. By 1985 the programme started at the earlier time of 6.15am and by 1988 the programme started at 6am. It had many different presenters throughout its run but the most famous pairing was Anne Diamond

Anne Diamond

Anne Margaret Diamond is an English radio and television presenter and journalist. She hosted Good Morning Britain for TV-am and the similarly titled Good Morning... with Anne and Nick for BBC1, both with Nick Owen as her co-presenter...

 and Nick Owen

Nick Owen

Nicholas "Nick" Corbishley Owen is an English television presenter and newsreader, best known for presenting the breakfast television programme TV-am and the BBC's local news show Midlands Today since 1997...

. From a very slow start which almost led to the closure of TV-am Good Morning Britain became very successful and had very impressive ratings. According to one presenter Mike Morris

Mike Morris (TV Presenter)

Mike Morris is a British television presenter, perhaps best known as a co-host of Good Morning Britain on the breakfast television station TV-am on the ITV Network....

 they estimated to have interviewed over 30,000 guests on the sofa throughout its run.

Good Morning Britain had a mixture of news and current affairs, weather, cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

s, music and many popular guests of the time. It also featured a popular exercise section, hosted in the early days by Michael Van Straten and Jackie Genova

Jackie Genova

Jackie Genova is an Australian-born exercise teacher. She was well known in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s for her TV appearances, particularly on the TV-am show Good Morning Britain where she presented the daily aerobics spot on weekends...

, and then more famously by "Mad Lizzie" Webb

Lizzie Webb

Lizzie Webb, often known as "Mad Lizzie", presented daily exercise routines on British morning television channel TV-am. She was introduced onto the channel's flagship show Good Morning Britain in response to the popularity of exercise teacher Diana Moran on the rival BBC One show Breakfast Time...

. The show displayed a famous yellow analogue-style clock on the bottom-right of the screen. The news was provided in-house by TV-am

TV-am

TV-am was a breakfast television station that broadcast to the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 to 31 December 1992. It made history by being the first national operator of a commercial television franchise at breakfast-time , and broadcast every day of the week for most or all of the period...

, but following its loss of the licence the news provision was contracted out to Sky News

Sky News

Sky News is a 24-hour British and international satellite television news broadcaster with an emphasis on UK and international news stories.The service places emphasis on rolling news, including the latest breaking news. Sky News also hosts localised versions of the channel in Australia and in New...

, from February to December 1992.

In its heyday, the programme would feature large outside broadcasts

Outside broadcasting

Outside broadcasting is the electronic field production of television or radio programmes from a mobile remote broadcast television studio. Professional video camera and microphone signals come into the production truck for processing, recording and possibly transmission...

 throughout the European winter/Australian summer from Bondi Beach in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, renaming the show G'Day Britain.

Other presenters of the show included Chris Tarrant

Chris Tarrant

Christopher John "Chris" Tarrant, OBE is an English radio and television broadcaster, now best known for hosting the first version of the television game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in the United Kingdom and later Ireland, as the two national versions of the show merged in 2002.Chris...

, Anneka Rice, Richard Keys

Richard Keys

Richard Keys is an English radio presenter best known for his time with British sports channel Sky Sports from 1991 until 2011. In February 2011, Keys along with fellow Sky presenter, Andy Gray signed with talkSPORT....

, Kathy Tayler

Kathy Tayler

Kathy Tayler, born 23 March 1960, is a UK TV presenter and former champion modern pentathlete.- Athletics:Kathy won the women's modern pentathlon World Cup in 1979 at the age of 19. She was a member of the Great Britain modern pentathlon team that twice won gold at the World Athletics...

, Lorraine Kelly

Lorraine Kelly

Lorraine Kelly is a Scottish television presenter, journalist and actress, best known as a presenter for TV-am, and later GMTV and ITV Breakfast, on Lorraine.-Early life:...

, Jayne Irving

Jayne Irving

Jayne Irving is a British TV presenter best known for appearing on the Breakfast Television show Good Morning Britain.-Career:...

, Dynasty

Dynasty

A dynasty is a sequence of rulers considered members of the same family. Historians traditionally consider many sovereign states' history within a framework of successive dynasties, e.g., China, Ancient Egypt and the Persian Empire...

star Gordon Thomson and initially, David Frost

David Frost (broadcaster)

Sir David Paradine Frost, OBE is a British journalist, comedian, writer, media personality and daytime TV game show host best known for his two decades as host of Through the Keyhole and serious interviews with various political figures, the most notable being Richard Nixon...

 and Anna Ford

Anna Ford

Anna Ford is a retired English journalist and television presenter, best known as a newsreader....

.

External links

• TV-am.net - The TV-am Television Archives (1983–1992)
• TV-am.org.uk
• Good Morning Britain at TV.com