It’s Helen Skelton vs Cat Deeley as daytime TV conflict erupts! Broadcast insiders disclose to KATIE HIND how BBC is plotting to ‘see off’ ITV’s struggling This Morning
When the BBC launched its daytime show Morning Live, it insisted that it was not a carbon copy of ITV’s This Morning.
But five years since it launched, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that bosses at the Beeb are secretly plotting to steal viewers from their rival programme by extending Morning Live’s airtime, in what is set to be one of the most vicious television wars to date.
Sources at the Corporation say there have been discussions about the possibility of keeping the show, hosted by Helen Skelton and Gethin Jones, on screen until 12.15pm rather than its current end time of 10.45am when Crimewatch Live begins, followed by Homes Under The Hammer.
BBC chiefs are hoping that viewers who’ve left This Morning – as a recent drop in audience figures indicates – will switch to the lengthened Morning Live.
A source at the broadcaster said: ‘There have been a number of meetings about the possibility of extending Morning Live to go fully up against This Morning. Bosses know that their ITV rival is struggling, so they want to encourage viewers to switch over.’
It is, says my source, a ‘plot to see This Morning off’.
Where such a move would leave Crimewatch Live and Homes Under The Hammer is yet to be decided, particularly as the ‘Beeb know just how much their viewers love both, particularly Homes Under The Hammer’.
Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard took up their roles as This Mornings hosts in March 2024, following Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby’s departures the year before
BBC sources tell Katie Hind there have been discussions about keeping the show, hosted by Helen Skelton and Gethin Jones, on screen until 12.15pm rather than 10.45am
‘They could incorporate Crimewatch Live into the show,’ I’m told, ‘as a segment rather than it having its own programme, which would of course save money, which is always a bonus.
‘There could be many outcomes from this but Morning Live is going so well and there is a huge desire to strike while the iron is hot.’
‘If this all goes ahead,’ they add – and so secretive are plans that the BBC is denying any discussions have even taken place – ‘then it is war.’
The Mail on Sunday first revealed the BBC was launching a rival to This Morning back in 2020, though bosses insisted, perhaps unconvincingly, that the two shows would not be adversaries.
However, they sniffed blood when the ITV show was thrown into chaos following the departure of long-serving hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield in 2023. That same year, the corporation announced that it was extending Morning Live’s slot from 45 minutes to 75, which kicked in just weeks before This Morning’s new hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard took up their spots on the blue sofa in March 2024.
And it appears to have paid off as today, Morning Live brings in almost double the viewers of This Morning.
Though the BBC show hasn’t quite ‘seen off’ its rival yet, however tempting that might be for Morning Live’s editor Emma Morris – who previously worked on the ITV show under its long-serving boss Martin Frizell.
She left in 2019 to take charge of the BBC’s One Show – and was later also handed the role of launching Morning Live.
‘Emma was senior at This Morning, she worked there for many years,’ says a source. ‘At the time it was very toxic there so it was such an amazing move for her to go over to the BBC.
‘But surely it would be only natural for her to want to beat her former show.’
While This Morning has weathered much criticism for its viewing figures, bosses are pleased with the 700,000 who regularly tune in, despite it being well below the two million viewers that Willoughby and Schofield drew in at their peak.
‘We are just delighted that there is some stability on This Morning now,’ one staff member said. ‘It was a rocky ship for a long time, now it has settled, it’s calm and Cat and Ben are going nowhere despite the silly rumours they are being replaced with Tess Daly and Vernon Kay.’
Indeed, it has been rocky for the good ship This Morning.
The very future of the show looked in doubt in spring 2023 when Willoughby and Schofield, 63, fell out, with him latterly confessing to the Mail on Sunday that he’d had an affair with a much younger male colleague at This Morning.
And then in October that year, it emerged that Willoughby, now 45, had been the victim of a terrifying plot to kidnap, rape and murder her by former security guard Gavin Plumb. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum jail term of 16 years.
So, as an ITV insider says: ‘The last thing This Morning needs right now is for the BBC to steal its audience.
‘But it’s brutal in television.’
