As the public lost its appetite for the anarchic style of The Big Breakfast, Channel 4 bosses decided to change the menu. But will the alternative dish up the goods?

It's tempting to say that British early morning television will never be the same again after the lock-keeper's cottage that houses The Big Breakfast for a decade was blown up by Bob Geldof in the last-ever edition yesterday.

But the public appetite for the anarchic, irreverent approach that typified the show in its early days has long gone. Now its efforts to be different look forced and embarrassing.

As the sun sets on one show, another is poised to replace it. Rise! takes over the Channel 4 slot next month and the chances are it won't be very much different to every other breakfast programme that people use as background while getting themselves ready for work, or the children ready for school.

Familiarity is what viewers want first thing in the morning, and breakfast TV is the perfect comfort food, with the mix of news, weather, interviews and lifestyle features. The contents differ little no matter what the packaging. Sofa or chair, studio or house, BBC Breakfast or GMTV... the ingredients are much the same.

The Big Breakfast, which came from Geldof's Planet 24 company, broke the mould by adopting a more bright, breezy and irreverent approach, as pioneered by original presenters Chris Evans and Gaby Roslin. It was the cheeky, young upstart competing against the more traditional BBC and middle-class ITV.

Breakfast television is still young in this country, compared to America, which celebrated 50 years of such shows at the turn of the year. The NBC network launched the first early morning show on January 14, 1952.

It took us nearly 30 years to venture into what was billed as "the last great frontier of television". Now half the nation watch breakfast TV, although most of them don't sit glued in front of the set for hours on end, but dip in and out while doing other things.

For the commercial channels, the early morning provides an ideal showcase for advertisements aimed at parents and children. The Big Breakfast may be suffering from falling audiences, down from a peak of 1.5m to 500,000, but the advertising revenue is gratefully received at a time when TV stations are under financial pressure. At one point, the show accounted for 40 per cent of the channel's advertising revenues.

When this country finally decided to follow the US, the BBC and ITV found themselves in a race to get on screen first. BBC Breakfast Time was the winner with the first edition being aired on January 17, 1983. Hosts Frank Bough, Selina Scott and Nick Ross presented from comfy-looking sofas.

Rivals ITV entered the cornflakes market two weeks later with TV-am's Good Morning Britain. They were relying on the big name draw of the so-called famous five - David Frost, Anna Ford, Michael Parkinson, Angela Rippon and Robert Key - to pull in viewers, but early ratings were disastrous.

It took sackings, a major revamp and Roland Rat to save the day and turn the programme's fortunes around. "This may be the first time in history that a rat has come to the aid of a sinking ship," someone observed at the time.

The troubles weren't over for TV-am which lost its franchise to Good Morning Television in January 1993 under the banner of "TV for Middle England". Seen by some as TV-am under another name, it did persuade Tony Blair to say he favoured it over Radio 4's Today programme.

Figures for 2001 show that GMTV retains the biggest breakfast audience, with a 32 per cent share. That compares to 21 per cent for Breakfast, the revamped BBC rival, and a mere eight per cent for the ailing The Big Breakfast.

It's been said that GMTV's success stems from appealing to the lowest common denominator, concentrating on the human interest side of the news rather than the political - the tabloid to the BBC's broadsheet and The Big Breakfast's comic. The Channel 4 entry made stars of Evans and Roslin. Paula Yates's celebrity interviews, conducted on the bed, were a big talking point.

Johnny Vaughan, Zoe Ball, Mark Lamarr, Denise Van Outen and Zig and Zag were other success stories over the years. Not everyone found it easy to adjust to early mornings. Model Kelly Brook and swimmer Sharron Davies didn't last long as presenters.

The current team, led by Richard Bacon, Mike McClean and Amanda Byram, has been struggling to retain viewers as the end of The Big Breakfast drew ever closer. What looked fresh and anarchic in the beginning now looks tired and stale.

The early faces from British breakfast TV have faded away. Nick Owen, Anne Diamond, the Green Goddess, Mr Motivator and Francis the weatherman. Some turn up on regional TV, others resurface on where are they now? programmes. Only Francis the weatherman is still doing the forecasts, but on Sky these days.

The outlook for breakfast TV is a bright one. Commercial stations need a platform to sell certain types of advertisements. The BBC can't afford to be left out, even if it's constantly torn between its role as a traditional news provider and the desire of viewers for something lighter first thing in the morning.

The new Channel 4 live news and entertainment show Rise! is being made by BSkyB with independent outfit Princess Productions. Fronting it will be Sky Sports presenter Kirsty Gallacher, daughter of ex-Ryder Cup captain Bernard Gallacher, and Sky News presenter Chris Rogers, a former host of BBC TV's Newsround. It remains to be seen whether they can capture the viewers as Chris and Gaby did in The Big Breakfast's heyday.