Robert Peston is not the first BBC star to quit for ITV but will he end up like Ant and Dec – or Adrian Chiles?
The path from the licence fee funded uplands of Broadcasting House to the choppy commercial waters of “Britain’s most popular button”, as it was once known, is a notoriously tricky one.
Peston, the BBC’s outgoing economics editor, is leaving to become political editor of ITV News and will present a new Sunday morning talk show to take on his old colleague, Andrew Marr. It seems like as good a time as any to look at those who have survived such a transition. And those who have not.
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After various children’s shows on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, Ant and Dec made their primetime debut on BBC1’s Saturday night show, Friends Like These. It was a modest-sized hit but was relegated to a career footnote by their track record (I’m A Celebrity, Saturday Night Takeaway, Britain’s Got Talent, Pop Idol) after signing an exclusive ITV deal at the turn of the century.
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Tell you what. It’s not easy dealing with these commercial breaks, as Des Lynam discovered to his cost when he followed the Premier League highlights rights out of the BBC to ITV. “It was not an overwhelming success” he later reflected of ITV’s The Premiership.
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That unfortunate list of Tory MPs he handed David Cameron aside, Phillip Schofield never looked back after making a full-time switch from the BBC to ITV a decade ago. Back on the Beeb he was Testing The Nation with Anne Robinson, while on ITV he can be found talking about sex toys, among other things, on daytime flagship This Morning.
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Adrian Chiles quietly became one of the BBC’s biggest stars, making an unlikely teatime hit out of The One Show before quitting for ITV in 2010 after Chris Evans was given the BBC1 show’s Friday night gig. But Daybreak didn’t work out and a few years later he was also replaced as the face of its Champions League football coverage. Now back on BBC radio – with more TV to come.
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History repeats itself department. When Nick Robinson quit the BBC to join ITV as political editor in 2002, the BBC reportedly tried to persuade him to stay – with a gig on Newsnight. Robinson, like Peston, went anyway, but was back at the BBC three years later, much to the fury of his ITV bosses. Will Pesto also be back?
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What’s not to like? Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine’s What Not To Wear, was an all-conquering hit for first BBC2 and then BBC1. But they went out of fashion after switching to ITV in a big-money deal in 2005. Shows such as Undress The Nation failed to repeat their early success and the contract was not renewed four years later.
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Morecambe and Wise, Michael Parkinson, the list of misses won’t stop people trying to become a commercial hit. Just ask Susanna Reid, the former BBC1 Breakfast presenter who joined ITV to front its Daybreak successor, Good Morning Britain, which is still waking up the nation – just not so many of them – with or without co-host Piers Morgan.
