BBC has made a massive mistake with one of its most important pr0grammes
BBC Breakfast debuted some dramatic new format changes this week (Image: BBC)
The BBC has been making major changes to the station and its popular primetime shows left, right, and centre this year, despite the staggering budget cuts it is facing. From a complete revamp of Strictly Come Dancing to the return of beloved evening shows like The Weakest Link and Gladiator, the corporation has been gradually upgrading many of its most popular shows. And this week, their early morning breakfast show was apparently the next in line for a makeover.
As Sally Nugent and Ben Thompson returned to the airwaves on BBC Breakfast, the show opened with a series of new on-screen graphics. Instead of the usual red timebox and headlines running across the bottom of the screen, bosses decided the show needed an upgraded colour palette.
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The show swapped their usual red graphics for colourful rainbow ones (Image: BBC)
The studio background graphics popped up in blue, while the taglines at the bottom of the screen changed to a red-to-blue gradient, highlighting what is coming up in the show. But with a staggering £500million in savings needed, these pointless changes truly feel like a waste of time, money and resources.
The show worked perfectly well with the previous format, but now it looks like it’s trying to appeal to teenagers with brightly coloured graphics popping up on screen. Not what you want to see first thing in the morning when you’re trying to wake up with the news bulletin in the background.
And I’m definitely not the only one who thinks so. As the show hit the airwaves, viewers swarmed social media to share similar sentiments. One user penned: “The fade/transitions on the new BBC Breakfast graphics are too distracting”, as another agreed: “Awful graphics dominating the screen on BBC Breakfast. What’s the point?”
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A third asked: “BBC Breakfast, it can’t be too hard to revert back to normal tomorrow, can it?” as a fourth echoed: “I’m with everyone else on the screen change. Out of all the things that need changing, this wasn’t one of them.”These changes couldn’t have come at a worse time for the show, after they received a nomination for the upcoming National Television Awards last week. They’re going up against other morning heavyweights, including Good Morning Britain, James Martin’s Saturday Morning, Loose Women, Scam Interceptors and This Morning in the Daytime category.
Surely, angering viewers with these new format changes could have waited until after the awards show? From a business point of view, it simply makes no sense to make such significant changes days after the NTAs opened voting for next month’s event.
There are so many better ways they could have used the money spent on these daft new graphics to provide viewers with a better viewing experience. Maybe by investing in fresh episodes of popular shows rather than pushing out repeats or axing shows that have no future in sight, like MasterChef, and taking the leap on exciting new content to keep things fresh.
Honestly, I think the corporation has been struggling to claw back its once-pristine reputation for years. I wouldn’t be surprised if these new format changes are just a distraction to shift the focus away from the backlash surrounding Naga Munchetty’s new job at BBC Radio 5Live later this year. The company is clearly facing some bigger issues behind the scenes, and it’s only a matter of time before we learn what they are.
