During the lockdown, some of our favourite daytime TV presenters have been fortunate enough to keep working – whether it's via Zoom or in a ‘skeleton’ staffed studio.
But with fewer paparazzi shots and product launches, are some of them at risk of losing popularity?
SEMrush has collected data from social media during lockdown, revealing who is cream of the crop when it comes to these stars - and it's bad news for Coleen Nolan and Holly and Phil...
Good Morning Britain
Love him or loathe him, Piers Morgan is reining champion when it comes to Twitter traction out of all the Good Morning Britain hosts. The opinionated star remains the most popular associated hashtag, and searches for his name almost doubled during lockdown.
On Google, searches for ‘Piers Morgan’ have risen 83% but he’s not the only one, as his co-host Susanna Reid was up 23%, and Charlotte Hawkins up 49% - and, alarmingly, searches for her naked are up 82%!
Less screen time during lockdown has seen the three Richards – Richard Arnold, Richard Bacon and Richard Madeley – decrease in popularity by 43%, 19% and 55% respectively. Have fans forgotten about them?
It’s good news for the dream team Piers and Susanna – as searches for them have increased by a staggering 4614% but for Richard Madeley who usually stands in for Piers during the holidays – both he and wife Judy Finnegan appear to have been forgotten about despite fans going wild for their TV return on This Morning earlier this year. They’ve had 97.1% fewer online searches from 165k in February to just 480 the following months.
Loose Women
The daytime panel show spent six weeks off air, until a safe distancing plan could be implemented. Despite this, its return saw an upturn of 12% in the number of positive tweets about the show and the popularity of four of its celebrity panellists has also received a boost – with Nadia Sawalha benefiting from a 49% rise in Google searches, along with Stacey Solomon, up 23%, Jane Moore, up 22%, and Saira Khan, also up 22%. It’s thought these rises could have been due to increased self-promotion on social media – Nadia has been dedicating more time to her YouTube channel and Saira documented her weight loss journey.
Meanwhile, Coleen Nolan has seen the biggest decrease in popularity, of 55%, followed by Ruth Langsford with 33%.
Stacey has seen pregnancy speculation rise eight-fold from 140 searches to 1300, most likely due to her confirming she and Joe Swash would love more kids. But lockdown hasn't helped them become a power couple as both her and partner Joe saw an 80% fall in the number of combined searches from over 40,000 to just 8,000.
This Morning
The popular daytime show appears to have had a positive impact – and not just on supporting viewers through these difficult days – as Twitter interaction is 4% more positive during lockdown.
Co-host Holly Willoughby revealed last month she was 'grateful' she still had a job to go to adding, ‘I can go to work and carry on. I’m one of the lucky ones.’
But still being on screen four days a week alongside co-host Phillip Schofield hasn’t got her immunity from losing popularity. All of the This Morning presenters have had fewer Google searches since lockdown but Phil has suffered the greatest drop of 97%, followed by Holly who’s dropped 45% and Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford are down 33% individually.
Notably, as a duo, Holly and Phil saw a dramatic decrease in searches of more than 201k to just 590, whereas power couple Eamonn and Ruth saw an increase from 590 to over 90,000 searches!
Go Eamonn and Ruth!
