Sky News‘ new breakfast show, hosted by Sophy Ridge and Wilfred Frost, debuts on Monday. Mornings With Ridge and Frost will air Monday-Thursday from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. London time.
Plus, the pair will launch Cheat Sheet With Ridge and Frost, a 10-minute podcast providing a news rundown of the day’s big headlines and stories, which will drop at 6 a.m. London time on all podcast platforms.
Ridge previously hosted the primetime show Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge for Sky News and, before that, presented the Sunday morning political show Sophy Ridge on Sunday from 2017 to 2023. Frost is known for hosting Sky News Breakfast and Sky News Today. The son of legendary broadcaster David Frost is also a contributor for NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC.
Sky News, for which former CBS News president David Rhodes serves as executive chairman, is a division of Comcast-owned European media and technology giant Sky.
In an interview, Ridge and Frost told THR what to expect from Mornings With Ridge and Frost, which will serve up news, discussion, and interviews.
Unscripted exchange and authenticity will be key ingredients, the hosts shared. “Authenticity is about communicating with the audience in a much more direct way,” Ridge explained. “The unscripted stuff is what I think both of us are probably most excited about and what’s worked really well in rehearsals. Both of us can bring our own experience and knowledge to those conversations and give that bit of analysis that you wouldn’t necessarily get on a traditional TV broadcast.”
Frost echoed that, saying with a laugh: “I think Sophy’s okay with me saying this. We’re both massive geeks, but also can have some fun and want to communicate with each other and with a wider audience. In rehearsals, it’s been really fun trying to get to a couple of bullet points or crucial facts in the teleprompter, to make sure we don’t miss that, but then chat with each other since we are both across the stories. And in just chatting with each other, we can say: ‘Look, these are the other two points that really stand out for me on this story that I think people should know.’ It’s about sharing our take and having that authenticity.”
Spending time together in preparing for the show has allowed the duo to find their rhythm. “Being a presenter for Sky News is often a bit like ships in the night because you’re presenting different programs,” shared Ridge. “So, you don’t really end up hanging out that much with other presenters who have different schedules. But we both have this clear idea of what we want the program to be.”
Quipped Frost: “It was impossible for us to even have a drink in the last year, because Sophy would want to go at 8 p.m., and I’d be fast asleep by then.” He added: “As Sophy said, we didn’t know each other particularly well until July, August. Therefore, there was a bit of risk. But honestly, the last three months of rehearsals, getting to know each other, have been an absolute joy for everyone involved. And I think we really, really click.”
So will Mornings With Ridge and Frost be a more traditional TV show or closer to social media feeds that younger audiences may be more attuned to?
“You want to do both of those in one show,” offered Ridge. “So, you have the serious news, the reason that people turn on Sky News, which is to learn about issues, but done in a more informal way” that Instagram, TikTok and Co. have a reputation for.
So, is the idea to replicate the British pub experience of people discussing hot topics informally? “The pub is very central to our thinking,” Frost said with a smile. “Yeah, it’s like the two of us are at a bar, and then the viewer just pulled up the bar stool on the other side,” echoed Ridge.
“What we can learn from new media is that people really do love authentic, unscripted conversation, and that we should lean into that, as opposed to scripted news bulletins with one person on there,” highlighted Frost. “They like authentic conversation that is not scripted. So we’ll definitely lean into that. But I also think that television can do one thing better than any other media across the media landscape, and that is live.”
That includes a sense of risk. “There’s a jeopardy of a live broadcast that the viewer is aware of as well,” emphasized Frost. “We and they don’t quite know what’s going to happen next, whether it’s an interview, whether it’s that I potentially screw up, or anything like that. Something could go wrong, and we will have that advantage over the new media landscape.”
With all that set, younger audiences are clearly one key audience that the hosts want to reach. “Yes, there is an opportunity for us to try and attract more young viewers, more female viewers,” acknowledged Frost. “Both of us are 40, 41. We put our time in, and I think, have proven ourselves in many ways over the last two decades, but we’re fairly young, and this will be a fresh take.”
Big guests and icons from the worlds of politics, business, culture, and beyond will be part of the formula for the new Sky News breakfast show. “We want to set the agenda in the morning. Rather than following the papers, we want the papers to be following our stories and our interviews,” Ridge shared. “And we want guests who can really communicate about the state of the U.K., which goes beyond big-ticket guests.” Added Frost: “It’s about those people who are affecting our viewers’ lives. Because we get access to people that others don’t, we have to make sure we deliver.”
The podcast’s goal is similar to that of the morning TV show, but format and duration are different, of course. “‘We’ve done the work so you don’t have to.’ That is Sophy’s line from the trailer, which I’ll steal for now,” Frost explained the idea for the podcast. Added Ridge: “We’ve got a three-hour TV show. The podcast is 10 minutes, and that’s deliberately 10 minutes, because the idea is that it will be in people’s feeds at six in the morning. So we can record just after five, and it’s basically the five stories that you need to know about with a bit of analysis. It’s your cheat sheet, which is the name of the podcast as well, to effectively let you get through the day feeling like you’re informed.”
The hosts are ready for Monday’s first edition of Mornings With Ridge and Frost after a period of preparation. “It does feel quite fun to have been given a blank slate,” shared Ridge. “No idea is too crazy. It’s been a really, really fun process. The more I work with him, the more confident I am that this is so fun to make that surely it’s going to be fun to watch as well.”
Frost is raring to go. “I’ve never been as excited about anything in my career as I am for this,” he concluded. “I think it’s a sort of seminal moment where all of the pieces fall into place. It’s going to be an unscripted, free-flowing, fun, important show with a partner in crime who, I think, is fantastic. We’re really going to get on well together. I really think all of the ingredients are there, and now we’ve just got to not screw it up.”
Ridge is also optimistic, sharing: “The biggest risk is the alarm clock and just working out how many coffees I can have before going on air.”
