Kevin Lygo, Managing Director of ITV’s Media and Entertainment Division, announced a sweeping overhaul of the broadcaster's daytime programming in May 2025, affecting Loose Women, Lorraine, This Morning, and Good Morning Britain. This restructuring is part of broader cost-saving measures that have led to job losses across the network. As part of these changes, Loose Women and Lorraine now air for only 30 weeks a year, a significant reduction from their previous year-round weekday schedules.
Additionally, Lorraine's slot has been shortened from a full hour to 30 minutes, reflecting the network's efforts to streamline its daytime offerings. To further cut costs, Loose Women, Lorraine, and This Morning are now all filmed at The H Club Studio in London's Covent Garden, consolidating production resources. Due to Lorraine's reduced runtime, Good Morning Britain has been extended by an additional 30 minutes on weekdays, now concluding at 10am.
Daytime is a really important part of what we do, and these scheduling and production changes will enable us to continue to deliver a schedule providing viewers with the news, debate and discussion they love from the presenters they know and trust as well as generating savings which will allow us to reinvest across the programme budget in other genres. These changes also allow us to consolidate our news operations and expand our national, international and regional news output and to build upon our proud history of trusted journalism at a time when our viewers need accurate, unbiased news coverage more than ever.
Loose Women's hiatus is due to ITV dedicating its 12:30pm weekday slot to coverage of the 2026 Cheltenham Festival, a major sporting event. The Cheltenham Festival is considered the pinnacle of the jump race calendar, attracting significant viewer interest. For those attending, VIP hospitality packages for the Cheltenham Festival start from £499 per person, offering premium experiences.
A key storyline in the racing world is that Galopin Des Champs can win the Gold Cup for a third time, emulating legends like Arkle and Best Mate, adding to the festival's appeal. In other daytime news, Lorraine Kelly has been absent from her talk show due to illness, specifically losing her voice, temporarily affecting the show's usual presentation. Beyond daytime, ITV's new 'power hour' of soaps launched in January, featuring 30-minute Emmerdale episodes at 8pm followed by 30-minute Coronation Street episodes at 8:30pm on weekdays, aiming to boost evening ratings.
No emmerdale or coronation street next friday due to rugby.
However, this schedule was recently disrupted; on Friday, March 6, both Coronation Street and Emmerdale were removed from their usual time slots due to live coverage of the 2026 Guinness Men's Six Nations rugby match between Wales and Ireland, highlighting the network's prioritization of major sports events. What specific replacement programming will air in Loose Women's time slot after the Cheltenham Festival coverage ends remains undetermined, leaving viewers in suspense. How many total job losses resulted from ITV's broader cost-saving measures across all departments, beyond the daytime programming figures reported, is not publicly confirmed, raising concerns about the full impact on staff.
The viewer ratings and financial impacts of ITV's new 'power hour' soap scheduling and reduced daytime show runtimes have not been disclosed, making it unclear how these changes are performing.
I'm so sick of this.
Put it on ITV 4! Everyone has it!
This is so annoying.
The new commissioning pattern is viewer-led. We already give more choice than ever to viewers on how they watch us through ITVX and we want to present their favourite soap to them in the most digestible way. In a world where there is so much competition for viewers' time and attention, and viewing habits continue to change, we believe this is the right amount of episodes that fans can fit into their viewing schedule to keep up to date with the shows. Research insights also show us that soap viewers are increasingly looking to the soaps for their pacey storytelling. Streaming-friendly, 30-minute episodes better provide the opportunity to meet viewer expectations for storyline pace, payoff and resolution.