ITV have taken Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women off air in a schedule shake up to make way for the World Cup.
Whilst Good Morning Britain aired as normal today, until 9am, there will be no Lorraine – hosted by Lorraine Kelly – this morning due to the FIFA World Cup coverage live from Qatar. This Morning and Loose Women will also be off air today, as the football coverage continues throughout the day with two games – Argentina vs Saudi Arabia and Denmark vs Tunisia.
Usually, This Morning would air at 10am until 12.30pm before Loose Women is on for an hour until 1.30pm. However, this won't be aired today in favour of the coverage of the football games until 3pm on ITV1 today.
Both ITV and BBC will be seeing huge changes to their usual TV schedules to make way for them to air the football games, as the broadcasters, who are usually rivals, team up to cover the matches live from the Middle East.
Niall Sloane, ITV Director of Sport, said of the changes: "The World Cup is now in focus and we’re delighted to be able to bring viewers coverage of what promises to be some of the standout games of the tournament across ITV channels and our new free streaming service ITVX, which launches this autumn. We’re kicking-off with the opening match and will show England’s group stage match against the USA as well as games involving tournament favourites such as Brazil, France, Argentina, Spain and the Netherlands. Plus, we have picks one and two of the round of 16 and pick one of the quarter-finals.
"The ITV Sport team is now looking forward to bringing viewers the very best of the first winter World Cup."
Whilst the BBC's Head of TV's Philip Bernie added: "We are very excited about our selection of matches.
"We have two England group games – their opening group game with Iran and then the enticing match up against Wales – as well as the heavyweight clash between Spain and Germany, big games involving Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, France and Belgium, and the first pick of the semi-finals. With extensive 24/7 coverage across BBC TV, BBC iPlayer, radio, online and social media, the World Cup promises to be a huge event to wrap up a major sporting year on the BBC."
On Good Morning Britain today, Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver chatted about her exit from I'm A Celebrity, where she admitted it was a "slog" being in there and she found it "disorientating" without any sense of time.
"You are literally looking at the sun and trying to figure out what time of day it is and where the sun is in the sky, you’ve lost all track of time, you’re sleep deprived, you don’t know what time you’re going to bed, you don’t know what time you’re getting up, so it’s very disorientating and I don’t think you realise that when you watch the show," she said, "I mean, I’ve watched the show from the beginning, I’ve been the best armchair critic there could be but until you’re actually in there it’s hard, it’s a really hard slog."
