Breakfast television


Breakfast television or morning show is a type of news or infotainment television programme that broadcasts live in the morning. 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.

Format and style

Breakfast television/morning show programs are geared toward popular and demographic appeal. The first half of a morning program is typically targeted at work commuters with a focus on hard news and feature segments; often featuring updates on major stories that occurred overnight or during the previous day, political news and interviews, reports on business and sport-related headlines, weather forecasts, and traffic reports. 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, 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. 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.
The three breakfast morning shows in the United States air live only in the Eastern Time Zone. 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.

History

United States

Network and local programs

The first morning news program was Three to Get Ready, a local production hosted by comedian Ernie Kovacs that aired on WPTZ in Philadelphia from 1950 to 1952. Although the program was mostly entertainment-oriented, the program did feature some news and weather segments. Its success prompted NBC to look at producing something similar on a national basis. 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, which focused more on long-form feature reports, a format that would be most closely associated with its Sunday edition, although it emphasized hard news during the week. 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, 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; with its awkward mix of news, entertainment and comedy bits, the program was heavily panned by critics. After that, however, came This Morning, which has to date 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 in January 2012; CBS This Morning proved to be more successful, but anchor turnover 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.
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, which went on to become one of the most successful programs in the history of American television syndication. The Morning Exchange on WEWS-TV was Cleveland's entry into the franchise; with its light format, ABC launched a national program based closely on the format of The Morning Exchange and Good Day! in November 1975 under the title Good Morning America. GMA has traditionally run in second place, but has surpassed Today in the ratings a few times throughout its history. Since the 1980s, Live! has been produced and distributed by ABC's syndication arm, primarily for ABC stations, but produced by ABC's New York City owned-and-operated station, WABC-TV.
Members of PBS, the nation's 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. From 1974 to 1995, Maryland Public Television offered A.M. Weather, a 15-minute national weather update staffed by meteorologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. From 1994 to 2002, WPBT distributed the Morning Business Report, a 15-minute financial news spin-off of the syndicated Nightly Business Report.
Fox, the youngest 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 carried The Daily Buzz for its national small-market feed, The CW Plus from 2002 to 2014, in lieu of a national program; that program was also mainly syndicated to affiliates of The CW and MyNetworkTV 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 infomercials, 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. In 2021, Sinclair launched a rolling syndicated newscast, The National Desk, formatted as a "commentary-free" hard news program ; the program has since expanded to include evening and weekend editions, along with a companion to the morning broadcast, The National Weather Desk.
A few of the major Spanish language broadcast networks also produce morning shows, which are often focused more on entertainment and tabloid headlines, interviews, and features, rather than hard news. ¡Despierta América! is the longest-running Spanish language morning program on American network television, having aired on Univision since April 1997. Similar to CBS's struggles to maintain continuity with its morning shows, Telemundo had made several attempts at hard news and traditional morning shows dating to the late 1990s, 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. 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. 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 the program transitioning to an entertainment-oriented format.
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, rundowns of agricultural product exchange data from the previous day and weather forecasts tailored to farmers.
More traditional local newscasts began taking hold in morning timeslots 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 and were led in by more hard news-focused, early-morning network newscasts. 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 and in some markets, expanded into the 10:00 a.m. hour by the late 2010s. 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, pushing local news further into what traditionally is known as an overnight graveyard slot. 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 Scripps Company">E. W. Scripps Company">Scripps Company and Tegna Inc., 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 television

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, and sports talk programs such as Boomer and Gio and The Dan Patrick Show.
CNN had primarily aired rolling news blocks in the morning hours until it debuted American Morning, which followed a format focusing upon news and political headlines, in 2001. In 2011, the program was replaced by Starting Point, which focused more upon topical discussions. Amid low ratings, Starting Point was replaced in 2013 by New Day, shifting towards general news and politics. In 2022, New Day was replaced by CNN This Morning, an attempt by then-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.
The Weather Channel originally has long featured forecast programs with a primary emphasis on business travelers and work commuters, culminating in the debuts of Your Weather Today and its business travel-focused, early-morning counterpart First Outlook. Since 2014, America's Morning Headquarters, previously hosted by former Good Morning America weather anchor Sam Champion, has served as its main morning show; the program's weekday edition has expanded over time, extending to seven hours by 2024, with a shorter four-hour edition on weekends. 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 Today weather anchor Al Roker, in 2009. The show was cancelled in October 2015 amid a transition away from infotainment programming with the timeslot filled by an extension of AMHQ.
Entertainment channels such as VH1 and E! have also aired morning shows. Sports channels sometimes carry morning shows, with a focus on news headlines and topical discussions.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, breakfast television typically runs from 6:00a.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 licensees for television broadcasts. By the mid-1960s, this was allocated at seven hours per day and 7.5 hours per day, thus providing a 50-hour broadcasting limit per week. Certain programming was exempt from these restrictions ; however no time was allocated to breakfast television until the early 1970s.
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 the BBC and ITV were providing daytime television programmes, with the commercially licensed 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. Initially planned for launch in 1982, it was delayed until the start of 1983 so that it did not take any oxygen from the launch of the UK's fourth channel. This allowed BBC1 to launch its own morning programme first on 17 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.
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. 1989 also saw BBC2 launch a breakfast service: its news-based offering was launched to allow the BBC to provide a daily report on events at Westminster and was supplemented by teletext news pages from Ceefax and a 15-minute simulcast of BBC Breakfast News.
In 2010, ITV plc, which by then owned 75% of GMTV, gained full control of the station after it acquired the remaining 25% stake held by The Walt Disney Company. In September 2010, the full legal name of the licensing company 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.
The regional variations of BBC One and ITV1, the only terrestrial networks that provide localized news bulletins, do not air local breakfast television programmes, though abbreviated regional news opt-outs are provided each half-hour during BBC Breakfast and Good Morning Britain. Outside of these short bulletins, local breakfast programmes in the vein of those broadcast in North America were largely nonexistent in the UK for most of the history of British television. From 2007 to 2009, now-defunct local channel Channel M, which served Greater Manchester, broadcast a three-hour breakfast programme called Channel M Breakfast; it was cancelled in May 2009, amid significant local programming and staffing cutbacks at the station. Several local television channels launched during the 2010s as part of then-culture secretary Jeremy Hunt's Local Digital Television Programme, particularly those owned by Local TV Limited, broadcast two hours of local news at breakfast as part of their news and public affairs programming remits.
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 a two-anchor format.

List of morning television shows

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:

Brazil

Bulgaria

ProgrammeRunNetworkNotes
Денят започва 2000–presentBNT 1Weekdays
Денят започва с Георги Любенов 2012–presentBNT 1Weekends
Тази сутрин 2000–presentbTVWeekdays
Тази събота/неделя 2010–presentbTVBranded as This Saturday on Saturday and This Sunday on Sunday
Здравей, България 2000–presentNOVAWeekdays
Събуди се 2012–presentNOVAWeekends
Твоят ден 2021–presentNOVA NewsWeekdays
България сутрин 2011–presentBulgaria On AirWeekdays
Добро утро, Европа 2022–presentEuronews BulgariaWeekdays and Weekends
Бизнес старт 2015-presentBloomberg TV BulgariaWeekdays

Canada

Global morning newscasts

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..

Local CBC newscasts

Instead of a morning show, most stations air a broadcast of the CBC Radio morning shows from their corresponding radio station, other stations may air the CBC News broadcast
This is followed by a broadcast of the CBC Kids block and then CBC News at 12 p.m. local time

Chile

Current

Several regional morning shows also exist on Chilean television.

European

Hungary

Former

ProgrammeDurationNetwork
8:08 – Minden reggel 2013–2016RTL Klub
A Reggel 1991–1993M1
Jó reggelt, Magyarország! 1997–2004TV2
Napkelte 1991–1993, 2002–2009M2
Napkelte 1993–1999, 2002–2009M1
Napkelte 1999–2000TV3
Napkelte 2000–2002Magyar ATV
Ma reggel 2009–2012M2
Reggel a Dunán 1992−2010Duna TV
Reggeli Jam 2008–2011ATV
Szabadság tér1999–2000M1
Naprakész 2000–2002M1
Reggeli Járat 2003–2007, 2015–2018Hír TV
Jó reggelt! 2018–2019Echo TV

Indonesia

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.

Current

ProgrammeNetwork
Apa Kabar Indonesia PagitvOne
BeritaSatu PagiBTV,
BeritaSatu
Buletin iNews PagiGTV
CNN Indonesia Good MorningCNN Indonesia,
Trans TV
CNN Indonesia New DayCNN Indonesia
Editorial Media IndonesiaMetro TV
Fakta +62MDTV
Fokus PagiIndosiar
iNews PagiiNews
Investor Opening MarketBeritaSatu
Jawa Pos UpdateJawa Pos TV
Jendela NegeriTVRI
Kabar PagitvOne
Klik Indonesia PagiTVRI
Kompas PagiKompas TV
Laporan 8 PagiGaruda TV
Liputan 6 PagiSCTV
Liputan 6 Pagi MojiMoji
Menyapa Indonesia PagiSin Po TV
Metro Pagi PrimetimeMetro TV
Morning UpdateiNews
New Power BreakfastIDX Channel
Ngopi TVRI Sumatera Utara
NTV MorningNTV
Redaksi PagiCNN Indonesia,
Trans7
Sapa Indonesia PagiKompas TV
Selamat Pagi IndonesiaMetro TV
Sindo Morning ShowSindonews TV
Squawk Box IndonesiaCNBC Indonesia
Starting PointTVRI World

Lithuania

Norway

Puerto Rico

South Korea

Ukraine

United States

Current

Locally produced programs featuring a franchise title on affiliates of Fox, the CW, MyNetworkTV, independent stations and associated Big Three television networks :Daybreak - This title is used by WISH-TV in Indianapolis to brand its morning newscasts, and has been branded Daybreak for as long WISH-TV has produced Morning Newscasts, and when they were once affiliated with CBS. Daybreak is also used by Gray Television's KKCO/KJCT-LP in Grand Junction, Colorado. Good Day – Fox's local morning news show format is used by both stations that are either owned-and-operated or affiliated with the network. The program may have a different name in several markets, but the format is the same from market to market. WAGA-TV adopted the name of their local morning newscast Good Day Atlanta in 1992 while still affiliated with CBS and taking the place of the first incarnation of CBS This Morning. ABC affiliate WATN-TV in Memphis which was once affiliated with Fox uses the title Good Day Memphis for their morning newscasts.Good Morning – used by local ABC affiliates to complement Good Morning America. KTVK which was once an ABC affiliate from 1955 until 1996 and is now an Independent/CBS alternate station; continues to use the title Good Morning Arizona for their morning newscast that runs from 4:30 a.m. until 10:00 a.m. WHBQ-TV, a Fox affiliated station in Memphis but once affiliated with ABC uses the title Good Morning Memphis for their morning newscasts.
  • * An earlier variant is A.M. , which was later adapted by ABC for AM America, a short-lived morning show that aired on the network for eleven months in 1975 before it chose to adapt Cleveland affiliate WEWS' local program The Morning Exchange into the future national format for Good Morning America. The 1980s PBS program A.M. Weather also used the same title form. Morning News – The defunct Tribune Broadcasting's local morning news show format usually seen on the company's Fox- and CW-affiliated stations, though this format has also been used on Fox and CW stations – as well as a few ABC, CBS and NBC stations – not owned by Tribune under a more generic title form. Tribune was purchased by Nexstar Media Group in 2019, with WPIX sold to the E. W. Scripps Company at the same time, though no changes are expected to any of those programs or their titling. Scripps sold WPIX to Mission Broadcasting in 2020, which allows Nexstar to operate the station. This Morning – used primarily on CBS owned-and-operated stations and affiliates. It has been used by CBS stations for their newscasts since prior to the 1999 cancellation of the first incarnation of CBS This Morning; the name and format has also been sporadically used on non-CBS affiliates. Some CBS stations renamed their program to The Early Show to match the national title of CBS's 1999–2012 morning program.
  • * A variant of this branding is simply titled Mornings, and has been adopted by CBS as the name of their current Morning program. Currently used by Scripps KNXV-TV and sister station KASW in Phoenix for their respected morning newscast that airs on both stations. Today in or Today – used by NBC affiliates to complement Today ; Fox affiliate WSVN in Miami brands its morning newscast Today in Florida, that station has used the title since 1988 when it was an NBC affiliate, even after the morning newscast on the market's NBC O&O WTVJ began to use the similar title Today in South Florida. Similarly, sister station WHDH in Boston retained its morning show title Today in New England despite losing their NBC affiliation at the start of 2017; replacement NBC O&O station WBTS-CD uses the title NBC Boston Today.Wake Up – also used primarily on CBS affiliates, often with the city name or local region after it. In the example of WITI's Fox 6 WakeUp News noted above, that station has used the title since 1992 when it was a CBS affiliate, with the program adapting to the Fox local morning format after 1995. Wake Up was briefly used as the main title of the long running Captain Kangaroo children's show in 1981.
  • Several stations throughout the United States use their own title forms to reflect their local character; for instance, KLFY-TV in Lafayette, Louisiana titles their morning show as Passe Partout to reflect the area's Cajun/Creole roots.

Venezuela

Current

ProgrammeNetwork
Un Momento DiferenteCanal I
PortadasVenevisión
Primera PáginaGlobovisión

Vietnam

Current

ProgrammeRunNetwork
Cà phê sáng với VTV32011–presentVTV3
Chào buổi sáng1995–presentVTV1
Nhịp đập 360 độ thể thao2007–presentVTV3
Tài chính Kinh doanh2011–presentVTV1
Sáng phương Nam2011–presentVTV9
Nhịp sống hôm nay2019–presentSCTV4
Tin buổi sáng2001 - presentHTV9
60 giây2016–presentHTV7, HTV9
Người đưa tin 24h2017–presentTHVL

Former

ProgrammeRunNetwork
Bản tin sáng2014 - 2015VTC1
Cafe ngày mới2018 - 2025VTC9
Cuộc sống 24h2010 - 2025VTC1, VTC14
Giai điệu ngày mới2007 - 2011VTC1
Let's Cà phê2008 - 2019VTC9, SCTV4