COLEEN Nolan has shared how she really feels about Loose Women’s ITV future after the channel made major cuts.
In May, The Sun exclusively revealed how ITV bosses had axed Loose Women and Lorraine episodes for 22 weeks of the year, in a brutal shake up of their Daytime schedule.
Coleen Nolan has revealed how she really feels about the major changes coming to Loose Women[/caption]
Coleen has been on the show since 2000[/caption]
ITV bosses have axed Loose Women and Lorraine episodes for 22 weeks of the year[/caption]
The plans also included cutting Lorraine episodes by 30 minutes and extending Good Morning Britain.
This Morning and Loose Women were unaffected by scheduling changes and will remain in their regular slots of 10.30am to 12.30pm and 12.30pm to 1.30pm, respectively.
However, Loose Women will broadcast fewer episodes – airing “on a seasonal basis for 30 weeks of the year” according to the network.
Now Coleen – who has been a Loose Women panellist since 2000 – has spoken out about the ‘devastating’ impact the changes will have.
She told The Mirror: “Loose Women isn’t ending, which I’m so thankful for, but it’s changing.
“It’s going to be very different in the respect of the size of the crew, but it’s still running.
“Which it should be – there isn’t another show that celebrates and supports all women of every size, age, whatever.
“But it’s heartbreaking to see some of my colleagues not knowing what they’re going to do. Many of them have young families and mortgages.”
She continued: “You read about it all the time – a chain store’s shutting down and 300 people are affected.
“You go, oh that’s awful. Anyway, what do you want for dinner?’, because it doesn’t directly affect you.
“I’ve never been so close to it. It’s made me realise how much this is happening across the whole country at the moment and it’s devastating.”
Kevin Lygo, Managing Director of ITV’s Media and Entertainment Division, said: “Daytime is a really important part of what we do, and these scheduling and production changes will enable us to continue to deliver a schedule providing viewers with the news, debate and discussion they love from the presenters they know and trust as well generating savings which will allow us to reinvest across the programme budget in other genres.
“These changes also allow us to consolidate our news operations and expand our national, international and regional news output and to build upon our proud history of trusted journalism at a time when our viewers need accurate, unbiased news coverage more than ever.”
Coleen described the changes as ‘devastating’ and ‘heartbreaking’[/caption]
Loose Women airs weekdays on ITV1 and is available on ITVX.
