WHEN This Morning bosses arrived at the ITV studios on May 10 last year, they could have been forgiven for thinking the show had hit rock bottom.
On that day The Sun had exclusively revealed how its beloved hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield were in the depths of a bust-up that would tear the programme apart.
Within weeks he resigned amid revelations of his affair with a much younger member of the production staff, and she followed him out of the door months later.
With the show’s golden couple gone and its future in limbo, surely things couldn’t get any worse?
Well, fast forward 12 months and the good ship This Morning finds itself in even stormier waters.
A year to the day later, on May 10, 2024, the show’s team learned that the most recent ratings were the worst in its history.
The previous day, its viewer numbers had slumped to an average of just 486,000.
It was a bewildering bombshell, because new hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley had been drafted in as the show’s supposed saviours.
As ITV battled plunging advertising revenues and the rising cost of making live telly, the duo were seen as a safe pairs of hands.
But it turned out they might have been just TOO safe.
Everyone — including myself — praised Ben and Cat’s natural, warm delivery when they first appeared on This Morning’s sofa on March 11, with more than a million viewers watching the show’s big relaunch.
There was no denying they looked the part, sounded great and were unquestionably smart, funny and at ease with one another.
Initially they had the air of a cool older brother and sister, but the sibling shtick quickly wore thin.
After just two weeks, the ratings were heading south, falling from the million who had watched the debut to a low of 692,000 — and the numbers continued to tumble.
Of course, the show and its hosts were as much the victims of the changing TV landscape, with more viewers using online catch-up services and streamers or social media for entertainment.
Nevertheless Ben and Cat never developed a unique spark that meant viewers would buck the troubling trend and turn on to This Morning.
Perhaps there was an undiscovered couple — the new Phil and Holly — somewhere out there, just waiting to be discovered
Rod McPhee
That’s what ITV had hoped would happen, particularly as its arch rival, BBC One’s Morning Live, has still been getting between a million and 1.6million viewers every day.
It was already a tough challenge, but ex-Good Morning Britain host Ben and the former So You Think You Can Dance presenter Cat were just too bland to deliver any water-cooler moments — the same moments that had been served up, consistently, by the rest of the show’s hosting teams over the years.
Producers need have looked no further than their own collection of YouTube videos to see that one of the most watched clips in the show’s history featured relative newcomer Alison Hammond.
Dire situation
Her infamous interview with Hollywood legends Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford six years ago — which featured Alison in fits of laughter as they swilled booze together — has racked up a whopping 18million views.
Which would leave many fans wondering what lengths ITV went to to sign up the part-time host as a permanent presenter of This Morning.
Alison’s irreverent, naughty and mildly chaotic style might just have given the show some edge, and her dynamic with co-host Dermot O’Leary seems to be working too.
The same question could be asked of other big names from the programme’s past, including cheeky Italian chef Gino D’Acampo.
His medley of best moments on YouTube has been watched almost nine million times, and he remains one of the most popular figures from This Morning’s past.
Scenes such as Ruth Langsford comparing willy sizes with a tape measure, though not considered a classic, have still been viewed almost three million times.
Another of her interviews, alongside her now estranged husband Eamonn Holmes six years ago, was watched 16million times.
And, of course, the presenters who dominate all the most-watched clips of This Morning were Phil and Holly.
No going back
Though there’s almost zero chance of bringing one or both of them back, maybe ITV bosses should have tried to replicate their synergy with the new hosts.
Perhaps there was an undiscovered couple — the new Phil and Holly — somewhere out there, just waiting to be discovered.
The duo, who had a 19-year age gap, worked because he was the older, experienced telly veteran while she was the attractive girl next door.
Though they weren’t an obvious pairing, from the moment Phil and Holly started working together in 2009, viewers were hooked.
Even when tensions between the two started to simmer as her stock rose in the TV world, fans of the show seemed to lap it up.
Which explains why, even during the crisis surrounding Phil’s departure last May, they were still getting viewing figures of between 700,000 and a million.
They were levels which were maintained up to October last year, when Holly left following an alleged plot to kidnap and murder her.
After that, with presenters such as Alison and Dermot featured on an ever-changing rota of stars, they actually enjoyed a bump in ratings.
Around the Christmas period and into the New Year they were regularly getting between a million and 1.3million viewers each day — which suggests that having two permanent presenters might have been a bad idea in itself.
ITV bosses were convinced that having a regular duo fronting the show was essential for success.
Yet the arrival of Ben and Cat didn’t continue a downward trend in the ratings, it seemed to actively spark one.
It’s a dire situation which This Morning bosses could never have foreseen, and in the year between May 2023 and now, they would have expected to turn things around.
But the current direction of travel will leave many wondering if the show will still be on our screens by May of next year.
This Morning has broken — and on the basis of their performance so far, it seems even Ben and Cat can’t fix it.