ITV1’s Monday morning got off to a chaotic start as the Good Morning Britain studio had to be evacuated, while This Morning was forced to make an emergency early start.
GMB hosts Susanna Reid and Ed Balls cut off a discussion of the day’s headlines for an abrupt ad break, while This Morning presenters Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley, not realising they were on air, were shown having a confused discussion about what would happen next.
They later confirmed that an alarm had been sounding in the GMB studio, forcing the team to evacuate.
It comes on the day that the latest phase of ITV1’s daytime schedule shake-up came in, with Lorraine taking a break for a few weeks while GMB had been scheduled to run right up to 10 am for the start of This Morning.
Balls said as the show went to an ad break: “While our ears are ringing, we’ll go to a break.”
Following the ads, coverage cut to Shephard and Deeley, who didn’t realise they were on air, and Deeley asked someone offscreen: “They’re not coming back, or they are coming back?”
Shephard added, “What are we doing?” as Deeley laughed.
This Morning’s credits then rolled, with no sound for the first few seconds, and Shephard then explained to viewers: “This is all very exciting. We’re 20 minutes early, Cat Deeley.”
Deeley added, “We are early because there was an alarm going off in the GMB studio, so we’re here early.”
Shephard said: “The GMB studio has been evacuated… We are hopefully going to find 20 minutes of content.”
He later reassured viewers of the GMB team: “They’re all absolutely fine, but they had to leave the studio.”
The GMB team’s first extended episode ended in evacuation.
(ITV)
Reid later posted a video with Balls en route to the fire alarm meeting point outside of the studio where they confirmed that all was fine, but that the fire alarm had started sounding in their earpieces.
Balls said: “We were that close to getting to 10am for the first time ever on the show.”
Loose Women is also due to be off air for a few weeks as part of a change to daytime schedules first announced last year.
Yahoo UK has contacted ITV for comment.