Lorraine Kelly said her show was already off the air by the time she was on her way to work on Wednesday, November 4, after an overnight power outage hit ITV's Covent Garden studio area. Is This Morning Pre-recorded Today was answered on air with a no: the programme did not broadcast live.
ITV said the wider area around its Covent Garden base lost power overnight, and that left Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women unable to go out live. The channel moved quickly, but the change still rewired a daytime schedule that normally runs with fixed presenter slots and a live handover between programmes.
Lorraine Kelly and the 9.30am slot
Lorraine Kelly posted that there had been a little bit of a hoo-ha and that her show would not be on that day. Her caption was blunt: “These things happen. Can’t be helped. See you tomorrow.” For viewers used to catching Lorraine from 9.30am until 10am Monday to Friday, the immediate substitute was Good Morning Britain, which was extended by half an hour to cover the slot.
Kelly also told followers, “Hello there, I'm on my way to work, but there's been a little bit of a hoo-ha. There's a power outage at the studio, so my show won't be on today. But you can still watch GMB. They're going to fix it around 11 o'clockish. So, This Morning will still be on as well, just a bit later.” That was the first version of events she gave, and it pointed viewers toward a delayed schedule rather than a full removal.
GMB fills the gap
Susanna Reid and Ed Balls later told viewers on Good Morning Britain that This Morning would not air on Wednesday, November 4 and would be replaced by a best bits episode. That meant the day’s daytime line-up was not simply delayed; it was reconfigured around the outage, with live output swapped out where the studio disruption made it impossible to carry on as planned.
ITV then issued a statement saying: “Following a power cut overnight in the wider area where our Covent Garden studio is based, we are unable to broadcast Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women live today. We will return to our normal schedule as soon as possible.” That wording settled the contradiction between Kelly’s early update and the later channel line: the disruption was broad enough to stop all three programmes from going out live.
H Club Studio in Covent Garden
The programmes are based at H Club Studio in Covent Garden, which is why a power failure in the surrounding area quickly became a channel-wide scheduling issue. The practical outcome for viewers was simple: the live daytime block they expected was gone, replaced by an extended GMB segment and a pre-recorded edition of This Morning.
Before Wednesday, ITV had already said Lorraine and Loose Women would only air for 30 weeks of the year because of cost-saving measures, so the channel was already running a tighter daytime model than a 52-week schedule. That makes the promise to return to the normal schedule as soon as possible the only real next step viewers need to watch for, along with whether the studio issue was fully fixed by the next day.
