Breakfast News

Presentation

The programme went through three main visual changes. The initial look lasted until 8 April 1993. The 13 April 1993 revamp saw the programme presented from the same set as the One, Six and Nine O'Clock News bulletins. A further and final revamp took place on 2 June 1997 when 'BBC' was shorn from its title, and on-screen it became known as simply Breakfast News. It was during this final period that the tone began to shift, with the return of a sofa set, alongside more features, and more interaction between the presenting team.

Broadcasting

BBC Breakfast News only aired from Mondays to Fridays with no weekend editions, although weekend editions were shown during the early stages of the 1991 Gulf War. This compares to their ITV counterparts TV-am and later GMTV who were on the air seven days a week. However, in September 1991 the BBC launched a short 5 minute weekend breakfast news summary. The Saturday edition aired at 7:25am to commence their Saturday schedule. The bulletin was not presented from the Breakfast News set, but from the main BBC News set based in the newsroom.

The Saturday breakfast bulletin was dropped from the schedules in the autumn of 1999 with the last Saturday morning bulletin airing on Saturday 11 September 1999. BBC Two had already been broadcasting an hour of news from BBC News 24, branded as "Weekend 24" on Saturday mornings from 8am to 9am since 31 January 1998, over two months after the launch of BBC News 24 and so the short Saturday breakfast news summary on BBC One started to become redundant. On Sundays the short morning bulletin would air at 9:10am and this would later be incorporated into the Breakfast with Frost programme which launched on 3 January 1993.

''Business Breakfast''

Business Breakfast was a daily news programme which aired between 6am and 7am, directly preceding Breakfast News. Initially the programme aired as part of Breakfast News broadcasting between 6:34am and 6:55am. From Tuesday 4 January 2000 Business Breakfast was subsumed into the BBC Breakfast News programme with Breakfast News starting at 6am each weekday. Business Breakfast remained as a feature not a separate programme however, with business news a key feature in the first hour of the programme.

''Breakfast News Extra''

Breakfast News Extra launched on 5 February 1996, as an attempt to compete against Lorraine Kelly on GMTV. The programme was presented from the Breakfast News office, on a blue sofa initially, and hosted by Juliet Morris. It was short-lived, and was axed in the summer of 1997 with the last edition shown on 29 August 1997. By this stage the main BBC Breakfast News had undergone a dramatic visual revamp with a new studio set which included sofas alongside the main presentation desk.

Notable presenters

• Nicholas Witchell
• Jill Dando
• Sally Magnusson
• Sara Coburn
• Laurie Mayer
• Justin Webb
• Andrew Harvey
• Juliet Morris
• Fiona Bruce
• Kirsty Wark
• Noel Thompson
• Michael Peschardt
• John Nicolson
• Huw Edwards
• Sophie Raworth
• Tanya Beckett
• Jeremy Bowen
• Julie Etchingham
• Liz MacKean

References

References

1. "BBC - BBC Breakfast celebrates 30 years of waking up the nation - Media centre". bbc.co.uk.
2. (14 November 2008). "BBC NEWS - Programmes - Breakfast - Presenters - The Evolution of Breakfast". bbc.co.uk.
3. (30 December 2013). "BBC Breakfast Time 1989: Kirsty tells us the new look BBC Breakfast News has had to be postponed.".
4. "BBC Two England – 22 November 1989 – BBC Genome".
5. [https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/breakfast/presenters/7706825.stm The Evolution of Breakfast] BBC News, January 2008
6. "BBC Breakfast through the years - tvnewsroom".
7. [https://web.archive.org/web/20141019051207/http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1991-09-21 BBC Genome: BBC1 listings 21 September 1991]
8. "A clip of the first weekend news bulletin".
9. "TVARK - BBC News - Breakfast News". tv-ark.org.uk.
10. Chris Gaskin. "Breakfast with Frost (TV Series 1993–2005)". IMDb.