Loose Women's Kaye Adams battled 'sleepless nights' over ITV's budget cuts
'Loose Women' star Kaye Adams could not sleep after ITV revealed it would be axing hundreds of jobs and making broadcast cuts to its daytime programmes - with the talk show only airing for 30 weeks per year from 2026.
Kaye Adams has battled "sleepless nights" over ITV's budget cuts.
The 62-year-old presenter has been a regular panellist and host on 'Loose Women', the broadcaster's afternoon talk show, since it began in 1999, and Kaye has admitted ITV's "out of the blue" move to air the show for 30 instead of 52 weeks of the year from 2026 has made her feel uncomfortable.
Speaking on her 'How to be 60' podcast, she admitted: "It did come out of the blue.
"I didn’t anticipate it, which is probably stupid in retrospect. You get into a sort of rhythm of life.
"I had a couple of sleepless nights I have to say, because it’s just like the rug’s been pulled from under your feet – what has been familiar."
ITV is also axing over 220 jobs, and Kaye branded that decision as "terrible".
She said: "It’s going to have an impact. Lots of people will lose their jobs completely which is terrible. It’s a huge change."
Despite Kaye thinking the dramatic change at ITV is "hard" to come to terms with, she does suspect that it could be a force of good for the future.
She said: "But I gave myself a talking to and I listened to my own advice for once – change is hard, but it can be good.
"The past is a trap, don’t fear the future – I’m telling myself all these things. And maybe this is the nudge that I needed to make some changes in my life and I’ll just have to go with it."
Fellow 'Loose Women' panellist Nadia Sawalha recently admitted she felt "tearful" about the budget cuts at ITV, and she fears how the broadcaster's new plans could impact employees who work behind the scenes.
The 60-year-old actress said on her YouTube channel: "What’s been brutal, absolutely brutal, over the last week, honestly I feel tearful about it, is that hundreds of people … are going to be made redundant out of the blue, these are all the people behind the scenes that support us in every way."
And Nadia - who, like Kaye, has been a regular panellist on 'Loose Women' since the show's launch - revealed she and her fellow stars could be "let off" at any moment from the programme due to their self-employed contract.
She explained: "What people don’t realise at 'Loose Women' is that we’re self-employed, I am self-employed. Every contract is a new contract.
"I could be let go tomorrow, I could be let go in five years - you don’t know because we’re not employees."
As well as 'Loose Women', the morning magazine show 'Lorraine' will now operate on a 30-week "seasonal basis", while a raft of shows will be broadcast from a new location in central London.
Kevin Lygo, the managing director of ITV’s Media and Entertainment Division, recently said the broadcaster was going through a "transition".
He said: "I recognise that our plans will have an impact on staff off-screen in our Daytime production teams.
"We will work with ITV Studios and ITN as they manage these changes to produce the shows differently from next year, and support them through this transition.
"Daytime has been a core element of ITV’s schedule for over 40 years and these changes will set ITV up to continue to bring viewers award-winning news, views and discussion as we enter our eighth decade."
