ITV's 9.25 shows

Revision as of 06:50, 26 March 2023

Good morning from Central!

For a little bit more than a decade, and then again for seven weeks, the 9.25am slot on Britain's main commercial network was pretty much guaranteed to be filled with one glorified parlour game or another. Starting on 7 September 1987, when ITV managed to palm off its schools' programmes onto Channel 4, the slot was the natural home for cheap 'n' cheerful tat until 20 March 1998, when a no less cheap, and even more tacky, alternative was found in the form of US-style "discussion" shows. From 23 March to 18 September 1998, Vanessa Feltz's show was moved from her 30 minute afternoon slot since the show started in 1994 to this morning slot and was extended to 50 minutes. When Vanessa took her show to the BBC the following year, Trisha Goddard took over the slot from 21 September 1998 and stayed for the next six years until she moved to Channel Five from January 2005, but repeats of the ITV version carried on until 15 April 2005. From 18 April to 27 June 2005, ITV tried their hands on a courtroom show called "The People's Court" based on the American version of the same name. During half term, ITV showed a week of the US reality show "Nanny 911", which is a copycat version of "Supernanny", then from 6 June to 1 July 2005, ITV got their hands on doing a UK version of the America's daytime talk show king Jerry Springer, the remaining ten episodes had to waiting until 5 to 16 September 2005 because from 4 July 2005, Jeremy Kyle took over, which was on the same set as the UK version of Jerry Springer and went on for fourteen years.

A mere twenty-one (and a teeny bit) years after they were dropped, early morning games made a brief return to the slot following the unfortunate death that brought an abrupt halt to the Jeremy Kyle show, but after seven weeks it was back to talk as Judge Rinder took over the slot. In January 2020, the 9.25 slot effectively disappeared as the extension of Good Morning Britain to three hours caused Lorraine to shift up and fill the hour from 9 to 10.

There now follows a list of game shows which filled this nearly-hallowed slot. Dates are of course series start dates. Weeks do not necessarily add up to 52 as the game show slot would usually be replaced with cartoons during the school summer holidays and would also take two or three weeks' break over Christmas and New Year.

• (a) Series 4 of Runway was meant to run for 8 weeks (as Richard Madeley said at the start of the first show of the run) but it was pulled from the schedules after 8 days due to news coverage of the Gulf War. It returned on 29 August.