The One Show and Daybreak

There is a weekday programme on every evening (7pm) called The One Show and a weekday morning programme called Daybreak. They are on two different channels – one on the BBC and one on commercial television. So one has no advert breaks, while the other one does. The One Show got relatively good audience figures. My theory is that this is mainly due to it being on at a time when people have come home from work and children’s programmes have finished and have gone to bed. Adults can just slump on the sofa and will watch any old innocuous crap, which is exactly what The One Show offers with a touch of light humour.

However, there were two presenters, a man and a female co-host who might have felt the audience were engaged in watching them. It seems this was the case because the commercial channel offered them a deal to revamp the Daybreak show and switch allegiance to the other channel and they moved (both of them).

Now, it seems the audience figures for Daybreak have dropped. You could argue that the same blend of innocuous crap and light humour that was perpetuated in the evening doesn’t seem to be working for the early morning viewers. Having seen the previous morning programme I’m not sure the needs are that different. In the morning, you have young mothers who have been up during the night, are tired and want something light and innocuous that they can watch while making breakfast, feeding babies and so on.

So, my conclusion is that the presenters are less important than they think, so the amount of money they get paid is grossly exaggerated and not representative of their value.