MEDIA: Headliner - Corley steers GMTV into profit and a bigger audience share.(Paul Corley, managing director)

After ten years, the station has more than enough to celebrate, Jeremy Lee says.

Eamonn and Lorraine are blowing up the balloons at GMTV in preparation for the station's forthcoming tenth birthday party. The invitations have been sent out and Gordon Brown is rumoured to be among those coming.

The tenth anniversary of TV-AM's replacement was at the beginning of January, just like that of Thames TV's usurper Carlton.

However, there seems to be much to celebrate at GMTV - it has reached a maturity that seemed impossible when it was conceived, it has grown its share of the breakfast audience and it is finally on a stable financial footing.

Paul Corley, GMTV's managing director and the chief party organiser, says: 'Of course it's a celebration of the past decade but it's also an opportunity to say we will be here in ten years' time.'

GMTV had a record 2002, with its share of the breakfast audience up 2 per cent on the previous year - it was the only part of the channel three day to experience any sort of growth. It also finally paid off its last loan stocks to shareholders - some pounds 2 million dating back to 1993 and was profitable for the third consecutive year.

Things weren't so rosy when GMTV was born. It massively overbid in order to wrestle the franchise off TV-AM, which led to the infamous letter of apology from Mrs Thatcher to TV-AM's Bruce Gyngell. The price of the franchise (around pounds 40 million a year) put GMTV in the red for the first six years of its life. The fee was later reduced by ten-fold, in return for an increase in the share of ad revenue it provides the Treasury.