GB News’ latest iteration of a Breakfast News programme launched last week, this time with heavyweight presenters’ Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster.
The programme, launch of which coincided with the introduction of a radio stream of the station on DAB+, takes a “BBC 5 Live” approach to begin with, where Isabel Webster starts the programme on her own at 6am, and Eamonn Holmes joins at 6:30am.
The reason behind this is uncertain. At BBC 5 Live, in the years of Nicky Campbell presenting their breakfast programme, he would start at 6:30am, 30 minutes after the other presenter, simply because he went on to present an hour-long phone-in show afterwards.
However, at GB News, both presenters remain on the air until the programme ends at 10am.
GB News promotes their breakfast show as “your daily dose of news, politics, sport and entertainment. It’s news with opinion.”
Well, having watched the programme for a week, and indeed, at the top of this article, you can watch the first show in its entirety, it appears to be more of a “ITV This Morning” sofa chat and share views and opinions format, more than it is a news programme, on a news channel.
The programme is making use of the much-lauded regional reporters, but again, the reports from them are very fluffy human-interest pieces and have very little, if not no bearing on the day’s news agenda.
Indeed, it is becoming clear that the idea of having regional reporters around the country bringing the news that matters to the viewers was just a gimmick. There is very little news coming from the regions via these reporters at all, which is a shame as the idea would work if the reporters were unshackled and able to find, react to and report on actual news.
As for the hosts, both Eamonn and Isabel both seem at home in the studio, both have a great on-screen rapport, and work together very well.
Eamonn has a pedigree in presenting morning shows, having spent 12 years hosting ITV’s morning show GMTV, and 11 years presenting Sky News Sunrise. He and his wife have also presented ITV’s morning magazine show, This Morning – a programme I referenced earlier.
Isabel is also a very experience and accomplished broadcasters, with 10 years at Sky News, including presenting alongside Eamonn and 6 years at the BBC.
Experience clearly, and obviously counts for something, as the programme is by far the most finessed, and professional of the output on GB News since its launch.
It is still let down however from behind the scenes. The lack of news, poor studio, and what is an evidently “television on the cheap” set up continues to plague not just GB News Breakfast, but the rest of the day too.
GB News broadcasts its Breakfast programme seven days a week, with the show continuing into the weekend with former Sky News presenter Stephen Dixon and former BBC presenter Anne Diamond.