TV-am 35 years on

This month marks 35 years since  TV-am aired. The station was launched with high hopes and some impressive names who not only had an in front of the camera interest but behind the scenes one as well. Beside from presenting David Frost, Michael Parkinson, Anglea Rippon and Anna Ford were also shareholders. However TV-am suffered the worst of starts for an number of reasons, low ad revenues due to a dispute with actors union Equity and then came the fact that the BBC launched their own breakfast before TV-am. Breakfast Time was initially thought to be either a morning version of late night hard news programme Newsnight, however it turned out to be more of a light magazine format. Another was that with the exception of main presenter Frank Brough was made of fresh faces like Selina Scott, Nick Ross, David Icke and Francis Wilson. TV-am was on the back foot and Frost was the only survivor of a cull. Under the direction of Greg Dyke TV-am became more popularist, new presenters Anne Diamond and Nick Owen read out bingo number, Chris Tarrant presented segments from the seaside and Roland Rat became a hit with the kids. Aussie tycoon who held a minority interest in TV-am brought in Bruce Gyngell to make it financially viable. To do this Gyngell made cuts and this included to news gathering this would become evident with the Brighton Hotel bombing. Whereas other news outlets had crews made up of large numbers TV-am had just one reporter (John Stapleton) reporting over a telephone line. TV-am nearly lost it's broadcasting licence over and it was only until Gyngell promised to invest more in news gathering that TV-am was saved. When an industrial dispute with technicians developed Gyngell had management operate cameras and showing repeats of Batman, Happy Days and Flipper. However Gyngell would prove to be the victor over the unions for which he gained the praise of Margaret Thatcher. However the end for TV-am would come with the ITV franchise auction of 1991. TV-am lost to the Sunrise consortium, Gyngell did not this laying down proclaiming that Sunrise would go bust within a couple of years and a few weeks after the loss he produced at a pubic press event a letter written by Margaret Thatcher herself expressing her sorrow for her Governments role for the introduction for the process that saw TV-am lose it's licence. Despite Gyngell's proclamations GMTV (the eventual broadcast name for Sunrise) would run for 14 years 4 more than TV-am. The studios where TV-am was broadcast from were sold to MTV Europe though it is used more for office space now. You whatever you may think of TV-am in terms of quality you can not say it was not a colourful chapter in British broadcasting history.