BRITAIN’S NEW BREAKFAST TV SHOW, ITV1’s Daybreak, has lost a fifth of its viewers during its first week on air.

The show has two Irish presenters – Newtownards-born Christine Bleakley and Grainne Seoige, who joined as features editor, and made her 40 second debut last week.

On Monday, one million people watched the first show as Bleakley and Adrian Chiles interviewed former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

However, only 800,000 watched the show yesterday – while the programme’s rival, BBC Breakfast, had 1.4 million viewers.

Bleakley and Chiles, who became known for being on BBC1’s The One Show, were reunited for the show – a move that was meant to bring back viewers who switched off towards the end of GMTV’s run.

A spokeswoman for ITV seemed nonplussed by the figures, telling The Independent:

Daybreak has made a strong start in a very competitive breakfast television market, with viewing figures for its first week up over 11 per cent on the average for GMTV.

ITV has made a long-term investment in new breakfast programming and, after over five years of decline for GMTV, we have already halted a downward trend in viewing.”