Loyal watchers of ITV’s much-loved Good Morning Britain will have noticed a few differences to their breakfast viewing this week.
And of them, most instantly obvious, perhaps, was host Susanna Reid’s hair.
As the normally exquisitely groomed Susanna made her on-screen return after two weeks off for Christmas, one couldn’t help but notice her traditional perfectly coiffed blow dry had been replaced with a less bouncy do.
The reason? ITV insiders inform me it’s all down to the financial bloodbath at the broadcaster which has led to more than half of its behind-the-scenes staff being axed.
Those cutbacks mean that Susanna has lost her own dedicated hairdresser, and no longer gets as much TLC from the remaining hair and make-up artists as she once did, as GMB now have to share their backstage resources with ITV News.
Hence Susanna looking a little less ‘TV ready’ than she usually does.
My GMB source reveals: ‘The glam squad has been cut – there is now a team of just three hair and make-up people for GMB, who have to cater for every single guest and presenter – along with lots of other areas of the show.
‘The problem is that the viewers are able to tell.’
Kate Garraway presenting the local news on ITV’s Good Morning London
Susanna Reid has lost her own dedicated hairdresser, and no longer gets as much TLC from the remaining hair and make-up artists as she once did
Indeed, the loss of Susanna’s blow-dry is just one element of the dramatic cost savings ITV has made to its daytime stable which it announced last summer. All four of its core daytime programmes – GMB, Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women – were effectively ripped to shreds, with more than half of the production staff made redundant.
For all the brave face ITV has put on over these changes – indeed, it even issued a new continuity advert over the Christmas period, which showed many of its daytime big presenting names, like Susanna Reid, Cat Deeley and Lorraine Kelly, getting into a lift together, all cosy smiles and glossy outfits – make no mistake, these are troubled times at the broadcaster.
The changes kicked in this week after a consultation period which saw almost 300 staff let go.
GMB was merged with ITV News in a cost-saving exercise which means its news gathering is shared as well as their studio in central London. As well as this, Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women all now have the same editor, Vivek Sharma, whose last job was executive editor of the disastrous Channel 5 show Steph’s Packed Lunch.
The broadcaster has also moved out of its plush studios in White City, west London, to a much cheaper and much smaller location at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden.
It means that Loose Women – which will now only be on air for 30 weeks a year, rather than 52 – no longer has its usual bumptious live audience because there is not enough room in its new, very cramped home.
And that’s not all there’s no space for. This week, there was anger from some of the Loose Women presenters as they no longer have their own dressing rooms in the new bijou studios.
It’s quite a contrast to their former home of White City, where they would often be seen skipping along the building’s vast corridors.
Lorraine Kelly says she felt ‘humiliated’ by the channel’s bosses after her show was slashed from 52 weeks a year to 30 and episodes have also been cut down to 30 minutes.
‘It’s incredibly chaotic behind the scenes,’ says my insider. ‘The space for all three shows – Loose Women, This Morning and Lorraine – is downstairs in the basement so three different sets are all crammed into one place.
‘This means that backstage the dressing rooms are limited. There just isn’t enough space, especially when there are four women getting ready to be in front of the camera at the same time.
‘It’s not an ideal situation at all. They’ve all just been told to make it work and are trying their best.
‘It’s been a huge comedown from their time at White City where each show had its own studio, and backstage areas like dressings rooms and meeting rooms. There have been some meltdowns.’
Further fury has come from Lorraine Kelly, host of her eponymous show since 2010. She is said to feel ‘humiliated’ by the channel’s bosses, but few feel sorry for her, as she is disliked by many for her apparently high-handed, imperious manner.
Her programme has also been slashed from 52 weeks a year to 30 – with the double blow that episodes have been cut from an hour to 30 minutes, with the extra half an hour broadcast time being handed to GMB.
The impact was immediately obvious on Monday. With the 30-minute slot, and thanks to advert breaks and promotional clips, Lorraine could only actually be seen on screen for 13 minutes and 20 seconds.
Little wonder that sources tell me she ‘is not happy at all,’ with one saying: ‘Lorraine has agreed to see out her current contract but there is a lot of speculation behind the scenes that she could walk before it ends. On screen she’s putting a brave face on but off it, she’s furious.
‘And, the most interesting thing about that is there is so little sympathy for her. She has ruled that show with an iron fist and it wasn’t always done in a very nice way.’
More sympathy has been shown for the ever-popular Kate Garraway, who first joined ITV daytime in 2000, when she hosted the now defunct GMTV alongside former tennis player Andrew Castle.
This week, though, ITV staff were aghast to see the 58-year-old ‘humiliated’ by being made to host the regional news for ITV London, during the GMB programme for which she is also one of the main hosts.
Susanna Reid and former MP Ed Balls were on the main stage for GMB, while Kate read the regional headlines. Many at ITV believe bosses don’t make enough of Kate, whose husband Derek Draper died in January 2024, despite her being well-loved by the viewers.
‘What a humiliation for Kate,’ fumed one friend of hers. ‘You have to ask why they are doing this to her. Nobody can understand why they make her do that.’
But other ITV sources promise me Kate will be looked after and has been handed GMB’s main presenting slot for Friday – Susanna’s day off – which she will host with her close friend Ranvir Singh.
For ITV’s part, it insists it had to make these changes because historically the programmes have been so expensive to make. With the right cuts now, it says, the shows can look forward to a healthier future.
Despite the hedging from bosses, audiences appear to be thin on patience. Indeed, they remember the glory days – during the pandemic GMB, hosted by Susanna and Piers Morgan, was an agenda-setting programme, feared by politicians and giving BBC Breakfast a run for its money in the ratings.
This week, in what might have been an effort to counter the prevailing narrative of decline, Susanna took to Instagram to share good news that their numbers were improving.
She gushed: ‘Big changes to the @gmb studio, and big ratings! On just the SECOND day of GMB in 2026, the NUMBER of viewers is UP year-on-year as well as the SHARE of all those watching. We love what we do and we love that you love it too.’ The long-term effects of the cutbacks remain to be seen, however.
Bosses will be discomfited by the fact that viewers appear to have noticed the changes immediately – and were quick to comment on them.
The much smaller studio at ITN’s central London headquarters was described by some viewers as ‘cramped’, especially during Susanna and Ed’s interview of Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch this week.
Online, another viewer commented scathingly: ‘They’ve moved Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women into a shoebox on a shoestring budget, and someone else is wearing the shoe. There’s no atmosphere, it’s echoey and claustrophobic.’
Another viewer wrote on X: ‘It looks awful, but I’m guessing that’s the ITV cutbacks. I think the daytime schedule needs a massive overhaul on ITV1 it’s the same old programmes each and every day.’
Insiders also say the budget for guests has been cut to the bone: bosses have slashed the amount of cash available right back.
In the past, each of the morning shows could have paid up to £10,000 for a celebrity, or for someone who found themselves at the centre of a big story, to appear on their sofas. No more, it seems. ‘Gone are the days when a celebrity would get paid thousands to talk about their marriage split or open up about a health problem,’ says a source close to the network.
‘There just isn’t the budget for those kinds of exclusive interviews any more. The only people they will have on there will be free, with something to plug.’
Of the four morning shows targeted by the cuts, only This Morning, hosted by Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard, has survived the week without criticism or backbiting backstage.
Yet that’s thin gruel for the rank-and-file staff overall, who are deeply concerned that ITV will no longer make quality content.
This, it seems, is a particular concern at GMB.
Plans have been in place for some time for the breakfast programme to share resources with ITV’s wider news operation, but retain its own dedicated staff who are expected to plan and produce the output each day.
One long-time staffer explains: ‘The truth is you can’t make a quality live news show without the right resources, and so many job losses and budget cuts is going to make it impossible.
‘The quality of the guests will drop because there aren’t enough people in the planning team to secure and book them, and there will be fewer people to travel to the scenes of major news stories.
‘If you’d told us this would happen when GMB launched we would all have thought it was crazy. We are now worried about what is coming next.’
