Dyke Repeats TV-Am Revival

LWT chief executive, Greg Dyke, came to the rescue of GMTV on Friday after the news broke that current chairman Harry Roche was resigning from the Breakfast channel, less than two months after its launch.

Good Morning Television started off on a shaky foot in January but things hit an all time low last week when it was revealed that ratings had gone down by 2 million since the launch period. On his appointment as new chairman of the company Dyke announced that he plans to shift the emphasis of the ‘F-factor’ from ‘fanciability’ to ‘family’ in order to increase audience share.

Dyke was called in on a similar crisis ten years ago when TV-am was suffering a decline in viewing figures, but he believes that GMTV is not at such a critical point as the former breakfast TV channel. “Audiences are 15% less than wanted but we can improve them” he believes.

City analysts have forecast that the station will not meet its business plan forecasts in regard to advertising revenue for this year, and that its high annual franchise fee will push it into a loss by December 1993.