Breakfast television (Europe, Canada, and Australia) or morning show (United States) is a type of news or infotainment television programme that broadcasts live in the morning (typically scheduled between 5:00 and 10:00 a.m., or if it is a local programme, as early as 4:00 a.m.). Often presented by a small team of hosts, these programmes are typically marketed towards the combined demography of people getting ready for work and school and stay-at-home adults and parents.
The first – and longest-running – national breakfast/morning show on television is Today, which set the tone for the genre and premiered on 14 January 1952 on NBC in the United States. For the next 70 years, Today was the number one morning program in the ratings for the vast majority of its run and since its start, many other television stations and television networks around the world have followed NBC's lead, copying that program's successful format.
Breakfast television/morning show programs are geared toward popular and demographic appeal. The first half of a morning program is typically targeted at workforce with a focus on hard news and feature segments; often featuring updates on major stories that occurred overnight or during the previous day, politics news and interviews, reports on business and sport-related headlines, weather forecasts (either on a national or regional basis), and traffic reporting (generally common with locally produced morning shows on terrestrial television stations serving more densely populated cities, though this has begun to filter down to smaller markets as Intelligent transportation system networks have spread further into smaller communities). Later in the program, segments will typically begin to target a dominantly female demographic with a focus on "infotainment", such as human-interest, lifestyle and entertainment stories. Many local or regional morning shows feature field reports highlighting local events, attractions and/or businesses, in addition to those involving stories that occurred during the overnight or expected to happen in the coming day.
Morning programs that air across national networks may offer a break for local stations or affiliates to air a brief news update segment during the show, which typically consists of a recap of major local news headlines, along with weather and, in some areas, traffic reports. In the United States, some morning shows also allow local affiliates to incorporate a short local forecast into a national weather segment – a list of forecasts for major U.S. cities are typically shown on affiliates which do not produce such a "cut-in" segment.
During the early morning hours (generally before 10:00 a.m. local time), local anchors will mention the current time – sometimes, along with the current temperature – in various spots during the newscast, while national anchors of shows covering more than one time zone will mention the current time as "xx" minutes after the hour or before the hour; the time and/or temperature are also usually displayed within the station or programme's digital on-screen graphic during most segments within the broadcast. (Most local stations originally displayed the current time and temperature only during their morning newscasts, though many began to extend this display within their logo bug to their midday and evening newscasts starting in the mid-1990s, starting in major markets and eventually expanding to stations in smaller markets.) Especially with their universal expansion to cable news outlets in the early 2000s, many news-oriented morning shows also incorporate news tickers showing local, national and/or international headlines; weather forecasts; sport scores; and, in some jurisdictions where one operates, lottery numbers from the previous drawing day during the broadcast (although these may be shown during rolling news blocks or throughout the programming day on cable news outlets, some local stations that have utilized tickers solely for their morning shows have extended them to later newscasts, whereas others only display them during their morning news programs).
The three breakfast morning shows in the United States (CBS Mornings, Today, and Good Morning America) air live only in the Eastern Time Zone. (Spanish-language shows air live in the Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones.) Stations in the remaining time zones receive these programs on a tape delay, with an updated feed broadcast to viewers in the Pacific Time Zone. Occasionally, a morning show may be broadcast nationwide if their staff is handling coverage of breaking news during its broadcast hours, or special live news events (such as British royal weddings).
The first[1] morning news program was Three To Get Ready, a local production hosted by comedian Ernie Kovacs that aired on WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia from 1950 to 1952. Although the program (named after WPTZ's channel number, 3) was mostly entertainment-oriented, the program did feature some news and weather segments.[1][2] Its success prompted NBC to look at producing something similar on a national basis.[3][4] Following the lead of NBC's Today, which debuted in January 1952, and was the first morning news program to be aired nationally, many other broadcast stations and television networks around the world followed and imitated that program's enormously successful format with news, lifestyle features, and personality.
CBS, in contrast, has struggled since television's early age to maintain a long-term morning program. Though it initially tried to mimic Today when it debuted a morning show in a two-hour format in 1954, the show was reduced to one hour within a year in order to make room for the new children's television series Captain Kangaroo. The network abandoned the morning show in 1957. From the late 1960s throughout the 1970s, the CBS Morning News aired as a straight one-hour morning newscast that had a high rate of turnover among its anchors. In January 1979, CBS launched Morning (titled in accordance with the day of the week, such as Monday Morning), which focused more on long-form feature reports. This format, however, was relegated exclusively to Sundays after two years, and still airs under the title CBS News Sunday Morning. It was not until 1982 that Captain Kangaroo ended its run on weekdays (before ending altogether in 1984), allowing CBS to expand its morning show to a full two hours. However, the high rate of turnover among anchors returned. An ill-fated comedic revamp of the show, The Morning Program, debuted in 1987. After that, however, came This Morning, which has so far had the longest run of any of CBS' morning show attempts. This Morning was eventually cancelled 12 years later, being replaced by The Early Show in 1999; The Early Show, in turn, ceded to the new version of CBS This Morning (this time featuring a format focused more on hard news and interviews, excising lifestyle and infotainment segments) in January 2012; CBS This Morning proved to be more successful, but anchor turnover (especially after the removal of Charlie Rose after allegations of workplace sexual harassment) and other factors eroded its audience, resulting in its replacement by CBS Mornings in 2021—a program that carries a skew towards news and lifestyle content similar to its competitors.[5][6]
ABC was a latecomer to the morning show competition. Instead of carrying a national show, it instead adopted the AM franchise introduced by many of its local stations in 1970. KABC-TV's AM Los Angeles launched the national career of Regis Philbin and was a direct predecessor to his syndicated talk show Live! AM Chicago on WLS-TV would later evolve into The Oprah Winfrey Show. The Morning Exchange on WEWS-TV was Cleveland's entry into the franchise; with its light format, ABC (after a brief but failed effort to launch the Los Angeles version nationally as AM America) launched a national program based closely on the format of The Morning Exchange and Good Day! (From WCVB-TV in Boston) in November 1975 under the title Good Morning America. GMA has traditionally run in second place (ahead of CBS but behind Today), but has surpassed Today in the ratings a few times in its history (first in the early 1980s, then from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s and again regularly since 2012). Since the 1980s, Live! (now hosted by Kelly Ripa and her husband Mark Consuelos) has been produced and distributed by ABC's syndication arm, primarily for ABC stations (although not exclusively, as it is carried on stations affiliated with other networks), but produced by ABC's New York City owned-and-operated station, WABC-TV.
Members of PBS, the United States' main public television network, typically air children's programming from the network's PBS Kids lineup during the morning and daytime hours. Some members may also carry exercise-oriented programs as early-morning programming (such as Lilias, Yoga and You). From 1974 to 1995, Maryland Public Television offered A.M. Weather, a 15-minute weather update staffed by meteorologists from NOAA.
Fox, the last of the "Big Four" broadcast networks, does not have a morning show and has only once attempted such a program; the network attempted to transition sister cable network FX's Breakfast Time to Fox as Fox After Breakfast in 1996, to little success, but instead has ceded to its local affiliates and Fox Television Stations, which have programmed fully local morning news programs that are at parity or have overtaken their Big Three network counterparts.
The CW (and before that, its co-predecessor The WB) carried The Daily Buzz for its The CW Plus (as well as its The WB 100+ Station Group) from 2002 to 2014, in lieu of a national program; that program was also mainly syndicated to affiliates of The CW and MyNetworkTV (and predecessors The WB and UPN) as well as several independent stations until its abrupt cancellation in April 2015. Generally since then, outside of a few select CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates, stations usually program Infomercial, a local extension of a Big Three sister station's morning newscast during national morning shows, or as Sinclair Broadcast Group did from July 2017 until March 2019, returned to programming for children under the KidsClick block. Sinclair intends to program a national morning rolling newscast for those stations by the first quarter of 2021.
A few of the major Spanish language broadcast networks also produce morning shows, which are often focused more towards entertainment and tabloid headlines, interviews, and features, rather than hard news. ¡Despierta América! is the longest-running Spanish language morning program on U.S. network television having aired on Univision since April 1997. Telemundo had made several attempts at hard news and traditional morning shows, including Cada Dia, and Un Nuevo Día, which launched in 2008 under the title ¡Levántate!, and would win the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Morning Program in Spanish in 2015 and 2017.[7][8] In 2021, Telemundo attempted another relaunch of its morning show, Hoy Dia, which was positioned as a news-centric morning show closer in format to its NBC counterpart Today.[9][10] However, in 2022, Telemundo used a hiatus for the 2022 FIFA World Cup to move Hoy Dia from its news department to its entertainment division, resulting in a relaunch with an entertainment-oriented format.[11][12]
Local television stations began producing their own morning shows in the 1970s, most of which mirrored the format of their network counterparts, mixing news and weather segments with talk and lifestyle features; stations in many mid-sized and smaller markets with heavy rural populations also produced farm reports, featuring stories about people and events in rural communities, list of agricultural product exchanges data from the previous day and weather forecasts tailored to farmers (although the number of these programs have dwindled on the local level since the 1990s, three such programs still exist in national syndication, the weekdaily AgDay and the weekend-only U.S. Farm Report and This Week in Agribusiness (the latter of which was founded and remains hosted by former U.S. Farm Report personalities Orion Samuelson and Max Armstrong), which have also received national distribution on cable and satellite via RFD-TV; the latter program had also previously aired on WGN America until 2008).
More traditional local newscasts began taking hold in morning timeslots (mainly on stations that maintain their own news departments) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These programs began as half-hour or one-hour local newscasts that aired immediately before the national shows. However, since that time, they have slowly expanded, either by pushing an earlier start time or by adding additional hours on other stations that are owned, managed or which outsource their local news content to that station, thereby competing with the network shows. Similarly, following the launch of Fox in the late 1980s, many news-producing stations affiliated with major networks not among the traditional "Big Three television networks" or which operate as independent stations began producing morning newscasts that compete in part with national counterparts in part or the entirety of the 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. time period; by the late 2000s, these stations began to expand their morning shows into the 9:00 a.m. hour (where they normally compete with syndicated programs on ABC and CBS stations, and the third hour of Today on NBC stations). The expansion of news on Fox affiliates, along with advertising restrictions involving with the Children's Television Act, effectively ended the morning children's television market on broadcast television by the mid-2000s.
Beginning in the early 2010s, stations began experimenting with 4:30 a.m. and even 4:00 a.m. newscasts in some major markets (and even gradually expanding into mid-size and some smaller markets), pushing local news further into what traditionally is known as an overnight graveyard slot.[13] Some local morning newscasts, which formerly had both softer "morning" musical and graphical packages and lighter news, along with feature segments with local businesses and organizations, now resemble their later-day counterparts with hard news coverage of overnight events.
Some locally produced morning shows that utilize a mainly infotainment format still exist, most prominently among some large and mid-market stations owned by the E. W. Scripps Company (which inherited the Morning Blend format originated in 2006 by the Journal Media Group following its 2015 acquisition of that company's stations) and Tegna Inc. (which inherited many of the local talk/lifestyle shows originated by Belo – such as Good Morning Texas on Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA – prior to the 2014 acquisition of the latter group by the predecessor broadcasting unit of Gannett), and often serving as lead-outs of national network morning shows. These shows are not usually produced by a station's news department, as they are intended as a vehicle for advertorial content that promotes local businesses and events.
Cable news outlets have adopted the morning show format as well. Fox & Friends on Fox News follows a similar format to the networks' morning shows, while MSNBC's Way Too Early and Morning Joe follow a pundit-driven format with a larger focus on political analysis and panel discussions. Some morning shows have been television simulcasts of talk radio shows, including Imus in the Morning (which aired on MSNBC until 2007, and subsequently aired on Fox Business and later RFD-TV before being cancelled in 2018), and sports talk programs such as Boomer and Gio and The Dan Patrick Show.
CNN had primarily aired rolling news blocks (Early Edition and CNN Live This Morning) in the morning hours until launching American Morning in 2001—which followed a format focusing upon news and political headlines. In 2011, the program was replaced by Starting Point, which was focused more upon topical discussions. After low ratings, Starting Point was replaced in 2013 by New Day. In 2022, New Day was replaced by CNN This Morning, an attempt by new CNN president Chris Licht to emulate the CBS This Morning and Morning Joe formats he had installed during his tenures at CBS News and MSNBC. It was cancelled in 2024 amid another change in leadership and associated cuts; a block of CNN's daytime program CNN News Central was moved into its timeslot, while the This Morning branding was retained by CNN's weekend morning show, and repurposed by CNN's early-morning program Early Start (which had originally premiered alongside Starting Point).
The Weather Channel originally has long featured forecast programs with a primary emphasis on business travelers and work commuters. America's Morning Headquarters (AMHQ) has served as its main morning show, and was formerly hosted by former Good Morning America weather anchor Sam Champion. With a shift toward a mix of weather and infotainment programs in the late-2000s, TWC premiered Wake Up with Al—an early-morning show hosted by Al Roker of Today—in 2009. The show was cancelled in October 2015, with the timeslot filled by an extension of AMHQ.
Entertainment channels such as VH1 and E! have also aired morning shows (such as Big Morning Buzz Live and That Morning Show, and the 2020 version of E! News). Sports channels sometimes carry morning shows (such as ESPN's Get Up and NFL Network's Good Morning Football), with a focus on news headlines (including highlights of events that occurred the previous day, and previews of events occurring that day) and topical discussions.
In the United Kingdom, breakfast television typically runs from 6:00 a.m. to between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.
Television broadcasting hours in the United Kingdom until early 1972 were tightly regulated and controlled by the British government under the control of the Postmaster-General. Restrictions were placed on how many hours per day could be used by broadcasters for television. By the mid-1960s, this was allocated at seven hours per day (Mondays to Fridays) and 7.5 hours per day (Saturdays and Sundays), thus providing a 50-hour broadcasting limit per week. Certain programming was exempt from these restrictions (schools, adult education, religion, sport); however no time was allocated to breakfast television until the early 1970s.[14][15]
In January 1972, under the then Conservative government, the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications,Christopher Chataway, announced to the British parliament that all such restrictions would be lifted, and daily broadcasting hours could now be set by the individual broadcaster. By October 1972, both BBC and ITV were providing daytime television, with the commercial channel ITV taking full advantage of the relaxed broadcasting hours. However, due to financial issues and the economic problems of the 1970s, breakfast television was not considered until later in the decade.
After a nine-week trial in 1977 on the regional television stations Yorkshire Television and Tyne Tees Television, the Independent Broadcasting Authority considered breakfast television so important that it created an entire franchise for the genre, becoming the only national independent television franchise. At the end of 1980, this franchise was awarded to TV-am.[16] Initially planned for launch in 1982, it was delayed until the start of 1983 so that it didn't take any oxygen from the launch of the UK's fourth channel. This allowed the BBC to launch its own morning programme first on 17th January 1983, Breakfast Time. TV-am, with Good Morning Britain as its flagship programme, launched just over two weeks later. on 1 February. TV-am struggled at first because of a format that was considered to be stodgy and formal compared to the more relaxed magazine style of the BBC's Breakfast Time, and a reliance on advertising income from a timeslot when people were not accustomed to watching television. However, it eventually flourished, only to lose its licence at the end of 1992, after being outbid by GMTV.[17]
Breakfast television appeared on Channel 4 in April 1989 when it launched The Channel 4 Daily, which was conceived as a "newspaper" with a collection of various short-form segments. In 1992, after failing to attract an audience, Channel 4 replaced it with The Big Breakfast — a more informal morning show with a focus on entertainment and comedy, presented from studios constructed in an actual house. The new format proved to be much more successful.[18][19][20]
1989 also saw BBC2 also launched a breakfast service in 1989. Its news-based offering was launched to allow the BBC to provide a daily report on events at Westminster[21] and was supplemented by news pages from Ceefax and a simulcast of 15 minutes of BBC Breakfast News.
In 2010, ITV plc, which by then owned 75% of GMTV, acquired the remaining 25% stake that The Walt Disney Company had owned, gaining full control of the station. In September 2010, the full legal name was changed from "GMTV Limited" to "ITV Breakfast Limited", with GMTV closing on 3 September and Daybreak and Lorraine launching on 6 September 2010. ITV had big difficulties with the slot as well; Daybreak was eventually cancelled in 2014 due to low ratings, and was replaced by Good Morning Britain on 28 April 2014. The series continues to trail BBC Breakfast consistently, and has marketed with the traditional Today format mixed with political debates. One of the co-hosts was Piers Morgan, until his departure in 2021, and the programme used his notoriety as a marketing point, to middling success.
There are no breakfast television programmes on local television stations in the UK, although for two years in the late 2000s, now-defunct local channel Channel M broadcast a breakfast programme called Channel M Breakfast.
Since its launch in 2021, news channel GB News has aired a breakfast show called The Great British Breakfast. It was originally anchored by three presenters in the style of Fox & Friends, but soon shifted to two anchors.
The following is a country-ordered list of breakfast television and morning show programs, past and present, with indication of a program's producing network or channel:
All Global stations, with the exceptions of Global Okanagan and Global Lethbridge, air their own local morning shows titled Global News Morning. In May 2015, Global made changes to their Morning News programs east of Alberta; instead of the entire show being anchored locally, 16 minutes of each hour is anchored in Toronto for national and international news stories. Each Morning News program starts at 6 a.m. and ends at 9 a.m., with the exception of Global BC, Global Calgary, and Global Edmonton, which start their broadcasts at 5 a.m.. These three stations also air weekend editions of Morning News which start at 7 a.m. and end at 10 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. In 2013, Global Toronto's The Morning Show was extended by half an hour. The additional half-hour is broadcast on every Global station at 9 a.m..
Several regional morning shows also exist on Chilean television.
Most of these programs are the morning edition of its respective flagship news program, and hard news in format. Some of them, especially the news-oriented network, has two morning news programmes - while the first are the hard news, the latter are the talk show format.
Locally produced programs featuring a franchise title on affiliates of Fox, the CW, MyNetworkTV, independent stations and associated Big Three television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC):