"Don't phone, it's just for fun!"

Ah, the olden days of breakfast tv, The Big Breakfast in particular... it's funny, GMTV should have abided by the Brekkie's old slogan that titles this blogpart. Then they wouldn't be fined £2m.

Today's MediaGuardian (http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2180589,00.html) has a big story about how ITV's breakfast franchise is in a bit of bother. The scary fact was that 40% of their profits came from premium rate phoneline competitions. That's just odd. I haven't watched GMTV that much - hey, I'm not a middle-aged mum so it's not aimed at me - but when I did there were endless competitions with stupid "what's the name of this programme?"-style questions.

Surely someone somewhere thought that relying so heavily on £2-a-minute phonelines was dodgy? Mind you, even the combined brains of the brightest financial minds in the world in the City of London didn't foresee Northern Rock going boom-bang-a-bang...

The question that interests me is what is breakfast telly for nowadays? I worked for the company that made The Big Brekkie and used to love the show in the Chris Evans heyday (and like it quite a lot when Danny Baker was on it - briefly... and like it mostly when Johnny Vaughan and Liza Tarbuck did it, especially when they dressed up as eggs, that was cool, but not when Mr V and Ms Van Outen came back the second time - you should never go back...)

Anyway, the main reason the Brekkie died was nothing to do with the state of the show, which might not have been utterly unmissable but was fairly watchable. Ah, apart from the short-lived incarnation in a nightclub-style set. The death knell was sounded by the competition from Five and BBC2. Their kids' shows basically took the kids and young mums away, leaving only 'da yoot' audience - but nowadays they are Facebook- or Myspace-ing, listening to Chris Moyles or getting down to MTV Base+1. Or, usually, all three.

Not watching a chunky Northern actress lady dressed up like an egg.

So breakfast telly is much more disparate and spilt up than it used to be, just like primetime telly - but from a smaller base so it's more critical to revenues. It's sad to think that in five years' time we may have news on the Beeb and repeats/acquired stuff on all the other terrestrials.

Oh, and apologies for not updating for a wee while. I've been busy but not that busy. I've watched telly and suchlike. I've simply had nothing much to say about it. Even Anthea Turner telling manky chavs to tidy their kitchens otherwise the rats will poo everywhere just elicited a slight 'tsch' from me. Not sure why...