--- title: > I don't like The O.C. date: 2005-07-29 02:45 status: published description: > Channel 4's sucky morning TV's back for the summer tags: TV, Channel 4, Third Watch, ER, Frasier, Will and Grace, The O.C., Friends, The Big Breakfast, BBC Breakfast, BBC, GMTV, ITV, Denise Van Outen, Richard Bacon, BBC Choice, Get Staffed, The Vicious Circle, Five, Flipside TV, Media Guardian, This Morning ---

It's me again. I'm back with similar complaints to those of about this time last year, but with a slight twist.

A week ago saw the end of Channel 4's almost as-decent-as-last-year term-time morning TV schedule, thanks to those damn kids getting out of school. Instead of Third Watch at 10:00, followed by ER and preceded by Frasier and the average Will & Grace; we now get to watch The O.C., Playing It Straight USA (the moral of the story being that men who're gay deserve twice as much money for seducing a woman) and endless repeats of Friends. (Funnily enough, as a 19-year-old I'm supposed to be squarely at the centre of this schedule's teenager/young adult target.)

A few years ago Channel 4 had a live breakfast show, shown between 07:00 and 09:00, The Big Breakfast. It was always much more likely to wake me up than either the dreary BBC Breakfast, comprising dull, inconsequential news-items masquerading as an entertaining (yet informative and thus worthy of licence fee money) magazine, interspersed with occasional news; or the dire, even duller and more inconsequential, woman-targetted GMTV, similarly interspersed with occasional news.

Among the many presenters of The BB were Denise Van Outen, and Richard Bacon, who also presented the obscure but excellent Get Staffed for BBC Choice, the obscure but excellent The Vicious Circle for Five and the slightly less obscure but equally excellent Flipside TV.

As I found out while randomly browsing Media Guardian about an hour ago now, these two are presenting This Morning this summer. I may get up.

(I'd still rather watch Third Watch and ER.)