Can Liam Hamilton turn round ITV's daytime ratio decline? Ian Darby profiles the man leading ITV's bid to regain past This Morning glories. (Headliner).(Brief Article)

You could argue that daytime TV is Richard and Judy and that ITV should crawl to them on bended knees if it is to resurrect its daytime fortunes. But this isn't going to happen, so instead it has turned to Liam Hamilton, who as a former producer of This Morning was the alchemist who created gold from Fred the weatherman and phone-ins about sexual ailments.

After 18 months surfing the web with the former DJ Peter Powell, Hamilton is returning to ITV to lead its attempt to reverse its daytime decline. One of Hamilton's first tasks is to address the thorny problem of This Morning, which has seen its audience dwindle from an average of 1.7 million with Richard and Judy to between 900,000 and 1.2 million with its current team of presenters.

This forms part of an overall decline in ITV's daytime performance that sees its share lagging 6.6 per cent behind that of BBC1. David Liddiment, ITV's director of channels, cites the loss of Home & Away as a key reason for the decline. However, there are other problems too. New soap Night & Day is still finding its feet and sources say Crossroads has three months to reverse itself away from the cliff before it's pushed.

ITV did not want Campaign to talk to Hamilton, saying that it was too early for him to speak about the role he is about to take up. But, cutting through the usual press release flannel, it is clear that the network has entrusted the job to a tried and tested pair of hands.

Hamilton has more than 20 years' experience with various ITV companies, mainly as a programmer. He made his name on Central's The Time, The Place before producing This Morning.

His predecessor, Maureen Duffy, a former BBC marketer, fell on her sword last month after failing to close the gap between ITV's and BBC's daytime share.

Those who know Hamilton say that he has a good relationship with advertisers, built up as the managing director of LWT. Phil France, the former managing director of Granada Enterprises, says: "He does understand advertisers' needs and it was really helpful to have someone with this understanding because not all programmers have this."