An Ode to the Chaos of Morning Television

Words: Lucy Fitzgerald

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The dynamics of morning television are not sexy, informative or useful but rather, kind of repressive. The dictates of ‘respectable’ broadcasting produce an eerie simulation. The format’s insidious sensibility comes from routine equivocation on devastating political matters, a commitment to respectability politics, and the preservation of law and order conformity over a morning cuppa. After the news, on shows like ITV’S This Morning and NBC’s Today, righteous broadcasters greet us with condescending addresses, and turn out the same painted-on Stepford Wife smiles to interview those arguably complicit in war crimes as they do benign reality TV contestants. 

Essentially unamused and neutered, there is a paralysing obeisance to the format. The mildest cursing is to be instantly atoned for. Nothing offensive can occur. Hosts appear like sentinels waiting to clamp down on any dissenting impulse, seeking to extinguish any evidence of honest expression. These shows become uncanny spaces in which societal frustrations cannot be processed. In concealing reality this way, morning shows betray our basic humanity and it’s as suffocating as it is sinister.  As the hosts strain to maintain the status quo, they prove uninterested in the destruction or creation of anything, only the organising principle of order.

So when such procedure is met with contempt, it’s exhilarating. There is an unparalleled entertainment value (and anti-establishment zeal) that comes from the hyper-manicured programming going off-kilter and sullying the corporate sheen, via irreverent challenge or dalliance with violence. As anything mildly unsavoury is treated as gross misconduct, there is reclamatory power in prodding the verboten, as it restores some sense of real-world perspective and play.
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A moment of disruption earlier this year - Larry David smothering Elmo on Today - evinced such mischievous interruption as necessary to chip at the facade these shows maintain, a facade that is insulting at best, cultural hegemony-upholding at worst. Deeply silly but actually meaningful, the smothering of the felt snout of an American sweetheart clearly rattled typical optics, as seen in the pearl clutching reaction. Reminiscent of George Bush getting a shoe volleyed at him, the Elmo attack was a strike of justified protest and primal outburst that upset the dissociative-from-the-outside-world dynamic, and it is exactly what these shows need: light terror. “Somebody had to do it,” vigilante David said with the simultaneous resolve and indifference of a hitman. Indeed, there is patronising, pandering context: Elmo - a puppet - has been earnestly positioned as a Mental Health advocate and that speaks to a broader crisis of puerility across all American media currently, in which the messiness of life can only be understood through a child’s filter. 

Another contributor to the endearing morning show shake-ups that colour outside the marks of contained daily broadcasting: the circus spirit of frenetic female popstar performances from the Zumba climate of yore. See Fergie, via caffeine or coke, cartwheeling, Nick Minaj’s supercharged vibrations, and Kesha’s wild child presence fucking up the feng-shui of the studio, and, in laddered tights, bringing into focus the conservative grooming and repressed disposition of the mannequin presenters. 

There is camp value in performing in lycra while many are still in their pyjamas, and doing so in unforgiving conditions; battling either the elements or the cramped, too-intimate studio space. The charm and authenticity of these chaotic productions cannot be overstated. The glam pop girlies primed us for the day ahead; spurred us into action with their "let's do this"-party-energy - like Rosie the Riveter if her arm contorted to toast a shot. Antithetical to a subdued, bar-stool acoustic performance on a late-night show, seeing the chyron time stamp of dawn over full-bodied, suggestive choreography, was beautifully dissonant. Bring back stirring a moral panic in the name of serving cunt before 9am.

Yet the biggest thrill comes when these shows are confronted with blunt convictions. Recall the uneasy reaction of The View panellists when Jane Fonda - always fighting the good fight - invoked murder as a justified solution to the untenable legislative regression of Roe v. Wade being overturned. While Fonda remained grave and unflinching, they hurriedly stressed that she was joking. See also the incredulity displayed on This Morning during the coverage of the Euros earlier this summer when radio host Tom Swarbrick vowed to “Burn the place to the ground” if footballer Jude Bellingham was banned from the tournament because of an allegedly indecent gesture he made. It’s called passion, Cat Deeley. Have you never cared about something enough to threaten arson? 

“The charm and authenticity of these chaotic productions cannot be overstated.”

On the conservative paradigm of what constitutes bad taste, a good old dose of coarseness still rankles, especially when it’s in the form of a prank call ambush. Such surprise solecisms are consistently seen on Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine, with phone-ins that range from facetious to filthy. Vine always responds with solemn disapproval, but who is this imagined audience who cannot handle an innocuous passing joke? Such organic moments of levity are arguably necessary amid their full schedule of culture war exacerbation. 

It's important to make these ostensibly credible broadcasters sweat when we can. Two key figures are now disgraced: Today’s Matt Lauer and This Morning’s Philip Schofield, while the 14 year reign of the wicked, imperious ITV dyad Eamon Holmes and Ruth Langsford was always confounding - they brought to mind the astute Bob Burger's observation: “Aren’t they the cutest couple on TV?” “Yeah, if you like white people”. Morning television is a media arm of Western police statehood, and honestly beyond reform, but until such programming is abolished, we can rebuke its condescension, resist its noxious phoniness, and affirm our real states of being. We are justified in desecrating its bad vibes. Through such desecration, we get the truth.