For 36 years, This Morning has arguably been the most important daytime television show we have.
At least it was until, rightly or wrongly, the show broke its trust with the public over queue-gate and then tension between Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby started to become genuinely uncomfortable to watch.
Schofe was then sacked by ITV, which he claimed in his flop TV comeback was due to the sentencing of his paedophile brother and not his affair with a much younger colleague.
Then after a few wobbly months back on air, Holly suddenly quit when an FBI investigation uncovered a plot to kill her and she quite rightly stepped back from all public life.
After all that, This Morning felt exposed.
The mask had slipped and, not only has it struggled to gain public trust again, it’s become completely irrelevant.
Now, This Morning has never actually been the ratings hit ITV seem to regard it to be – it would often peak at just under one million viewers during Holly and Phil’s tenure, which is only marginally better than an episode of Hollyoaks.
But over the last year it has hit an all-time low, pulling in around just 500,000 viewers daily.
Personally, I don’t see things getting any better unless drastic changes and returns to old formats are made.
Yesterday, This Morning editor Martin Frizell confirmed he was leaving after 10 years to look after his wife Fiona Phillips, who revealed earlier this year she’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Frizell was integral to the show’s success, which went beyond daytime television and, during the earliest years of his reign, This Morning had never been stronger.
I used to be a snob about This Morning until watching it quite literally became a part of my job and for a while, it became a highlight of my day.
Its beautiful chaos was its charm. The jeopardy that a presenter would laugh at the most inappropriate moment in an interview or that a guest would go on television to have their phobia of Simon Cowell cured by the Speakmans was television at its best.
It was a magic that couldn’t be forced.
Sure, there were moments that may well have been exaggerated: I’m sure Holly and Phil had time to get out of their glad rags from the NTAs before spending two hours giggling at still being drunk on television, but even if it was hammed up for entertainment it didn’t matter because their hysterics were genuine.
Their friendship was real and that was the golden ticket.
And despite many of their fans never watching a full episode of This Morning, they were seemingly the only duo to come close to the popularity of Ant and Dec.
But trouble had been brewing before their respective exits.
This Morning stopped being a top contender at the National Television Awards. Alison Hammond was becoming more popular than Holly and Phil, and without their friendship as the show’s beating heart, it fell apart at the seams.
Television has never been more reliant on viral moments than it is today with channels monetising views on social media clips. And there was a time when This Morning was packed with these kinds of moments.
Clips of Holly and Phil breaking down at Gino D’Acampo’s grandmother being a bike or Alison pushing a topless model into the River Mersey have amassed millions of hits on YouTube, far beyond the show’s actual viewership.
It’s why most newsrooms had, and still have, a journalist on This Morning watch, hoping to catch the next big clip to get millions of views on their sites before rivals.
But the days when This Morning could produce the quality of content that would be a Hunsnet dream are long gone – partly because they don’t have presenters with the charisma to go viral.
Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard, as lovely as they are, have the chemistry of two strangers on an awkward date.
In their own right, they are two of the best presenters we have, but they’re not best mates – or at least they don’t seem to be.
They don’t bicker like former married couple and ex-hosts Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes or have each other in fits of giggles like Phil and Holly when they were thick as thieves.
Considering This Morning’s format relies so heavily on the friendship between its two main presenters, that’s a massive problem.
In short, without Holly and Phil at the helm, This Morning is suffering from an identity crisis.
This Morning was always best when it knew it was in on the joke like Holly and Phil did. They knew when an episode had spiralled into absurdity and with one look at the camera we knew they were fighting as hard as they possibly could to hold in a laugh – until they couldn’t.
But then they’d be vulnerable too. If they weren’t speaking to a woman married to a ghost who was having an affair, they would be moved by a hero worthy of their tears.
The unbridled fun of This Morning feels long gone but it doesn’t feel credible enough to take itself seriously either. The good news though, is that this can be easily fixed.
Holly and Phil aren’t the only two presenters with a special chemistry and genuine bond both on and off camera. Rylan Clark and Emma Willis would be a great combo and were perfect when they stood in as presenters.
They’re endless fun but sharp too when they need to be – a politician would underestimate Rylan or Emma at their peril but instead, they’re given a painfully easy time with Cat and Ben.
And it’s not like better, and more obvious, partnerships don’t already exist for both of the current presenters anyway. Ben would work well with Kate Garraway, as proven by their work on GMB together, while Cat and husband Patrick Kielty would have much more chemistry.
When a new editor comes in, they’ve got a tough but not impossible job on their hands.
They need to remember why This Morning celebrated in the first place – for being the best company at the dreariest part of the day and, most importantly, for making us laugh like nothing else.
Get Alison back on the road, wreaking chaos at one cul-de-sac around the country at a time with two pals watching from the studio in sheer horror. It’s what the people want.
If This Morning is to have a future, I’m afraid Cat and Ben can’t be in it together.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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