Breakfast News
BBC breakfast news programme from 1989 to 2000.
Breakfast News was a breakfast news programme that first aired on BBC1 on 2 October 1989, originally planned to launch on 18 September 1989 but delayed by two weeks due to technical issues with its new studio. It adopted a rolling news format with news summaries every 15 minutes, plus weather and regional news every 30 minutes, along with a review of the day's newspapers and regular business news updates. The final edition aired on 15 September 2000, and it relaunched as BBC Breakfast on 2 October 2000.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Breakfast television
- Presenter
- Various (see below)
- Creator
- BBC News
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Language
- English
- Network
- BBC One
- First aired
- 2 October 1989
- Last aired
- 15 September 2000
Facts from the source article.
Presentation
Breakfast News had three major visual updates. Its first look remained until April 1993. A change that month moved the show to the same studio used for the One, Six, and Nine O'Clock News. The final redesign in June 1997 dropped "BBC" from the on-screen title, leaving just Breakfast News. This era brought back a sofa, added more feature segments, and increased casual interaction between the presenters.
Broadcasting
BBC Breakfast News was a weekday-only programme, with no regular weekend editions. The only exception came during the early part of the 1991 Gulf War, when weekend bulletins were shown. In September 1991, the BBC introduced a five-minute weekend breakfast summary. The Saturday version aired at 7:25 am to start the day’s schedule, but it was broadcast from the main BBC News set in the newsroom, not the Breakfast News studio. This Saturday bulletin was removed in autumn 1999, ending on 11 September 1999. By then, BBC Two had been showing an hour of BBC News 24 each Saturday morning since 31 January 1998, branded as ‘Weekend 24’ from 8 am to 9 am, which made the short BBC One summary unnecessary. On Sundays, a brief bulletin aired at 9:10 am. This was later folded into the programme Breakfast with Frost, which began on 3 January 1993.
More in Breakfast Television in the United Kingdom
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