UTV Ireland to screen Good Morning Britain to boost ratings

Its title may be awkwardly un-Irish, but UTV Ireland is adding ITV breakfast show Good Morning Britain to its schedule from Monday, with news updates from its Dublin-based Ireland Live team included in the programme.

The move follows complaints from viewers about the absence of the show on the new channel. It will also serve to promote its two evening news bulletins, which attracted less than a 5 per cent share of viewers for their time slots in their first few weeks on air.

"It wasn't initially planned that we would do this, but there were a lot of social media and email comments asking us about the show," said Michael Wilson, managing director of television for UTV Media. Despite the loyalty of Irish news audiences to radio in the morning, "there does appear to be demand" for breakfast television too, he said.

UTV’s 6.30pm and 10pm Ireland Live news programmes, which have just a 2 per cent and a 4 per cent audience share respectively, were about building the channel’s reputation, he added. “The news is a slow burner. Building a channel is a slow burner. Audience figures will come later.”

The head of the UTV Ireland channel Mary Curtis said the morning news updates within Good Morning Britain would "absolutely" alert viewers to its evening coverage. "We are very pleased with the news programmes editorially," she said.

‘Brand new and fresh’

It was always UTV Ireland’s intention to add programming once the channel bedded down, Mr Wilson said, but the decision to buy breakfast television rights had come sooner than expected. Good Morning Britain was liked by viewers because it was “brand new and fresh”, he said.

The programme, which runs from 6am to 8.30am on weekdays, was launched last year as a replacement for the previous ITV breakfast show Daybreak, which in turn had been lauded as the successor to the long-running GMTV, but was a flop with viewers.

Good Morning Britain is presented by Susanna Reid, Ben Shephard, Charlotte Hawkins and Sean Fletcher, with Reid poached from the BBC for a big pay-cheque to front the show. It has been broadcast on UTV's Northern service with news coverage from Belfast in the regional opt-out slots, but when UTV Ireland launched on January 1st, it was not included in its schedule.

This meant it was one of the programmes that were no longer available to about 400,000 customers of cable television platform UPC, who previously had access to the "old" UTV, in some cases for decades. From Monday, it will be restored to those viewers, with the addition of brief Ireland Live news and weather updates.

The show, which will be available to Saorview viewers and on the main Sky electronic programme guide for the first time, will overlap with TV3’s Ireland AM, which attracted an average viewership of 53,400 in 2014, up almost 4 per cent on 2013. Its viewing figures typically enjoy a higher peak over the course of its running time.

Mr Wilson said UTV Ireland's overall share of viewers in 2015 would be "much higher" than the 8 per cent forecast by the media agency Carat Ireland. The broadcaster would continue to track social media feedback from viewers "very closely", he confirmed. "On a week-by-week basis, there are more positive than negative comments."