The days of This Morning dominating daytime television are long gone.
Britain’s most-watched live magazine daytime show, Morning Live, on BBC One will be back on audiences screens even earlier in the New Year as it returns with a longer running time and a new presenter line up.
From January 2nd 2024, Helen Skelton and Michelle Ackerley will become permanent presenters on the show, alternating alongside Gethin Jones every Monday to Wednesday. Gethin will continue to present four to five shows a week. Kym Marsh will present on Thursdays, and a host of brilliant guest presenters including Sara Cox, Kimberley Walsh, Gaby Roslin and Rav Wilding will continue to co-host regularly too.
The show will also bring even more to BBC One audiences as it extends its daily running time from 45 minutes to 75 minutes, running from 9:30 to 10:45 every weekday. It will continue to feature its unrivalled team of experts who bring together a wealth of experience from across some of BBC’s most trusted shows, all under one roof.
Emma Morris, Morning Live Executive Editor, BBC Studios:
“Helen and Michelle have been a huge hit with audiences as guest co-hosts since September and are both a joy to work with, so we are thrilled they will now become a permanent part of the team, alongside Gethin. They both bring a wealth of live presenting experience with them and continue our Morning Live trend for northern, female, power houses! We are so excited to be bringing audiences an additional 30 minutes of topical, relevant and entertaining content each day, too. With a cost of living crisis, a scam epidemic and so much fake news and misinformation shared online, Morning Live has become the go to place for impartial advice audiences can trust.”
Morning Live, which has just won Best Factual Series at the Royal Television Society North West awards was created during the pandemic as a one-stop shop for trusted consumer, money and health advice. The show draws up to 1.4m viewers a day, with an average of 1.2 million. As well as bringing lots of warmth and companionship to its loyal audience, factual journalism also sits at the heart of every show and this year the team has held huge companies to account.
2023 saw the show exclusively challenge leading fast food restaurants on accuracy of calories labelled on their menus. Another investigation led to one supermarket recalling a product line after it was shown to be selling identical products in different packaging – at different prices. It also highlighted how violent gang crime was in operation on a popular online shopping site. It fought on behalf of a viewer to get over £84k back in their pocket when their bank was holding on to their cash and its recent Scam Week was a massive success with over 40,000 stickers given out to viewers with powerful messaging on to prevent them being scammed.
This Morning, which has seen two years of controversies, has been on a ratings decline for several years over on ITV.
