Why is Loose Women not on this week? Huge shake up in ITV schedule as chat show bumped from air
Loose Women viewers have been warned that the show will not be available to watch this week after a huge shake-up in ITV’s schedule.
The early-afternoon ITV chat show has been pulled from its usual place in the TV schedule from Tuesday, June 17 until Friday, June 20. Presenter Ruth Langsford broke the news to viewers during the final show on Monday (June 16), confirming that fans would see the women back on their screens for another week.
She said: “That's it from us today, I'm afraid and actually it gets worse... We're not on all week!”
The schedule shake-up from ITV comes as the channel hosts live coverage of the Royal Ascot horse racing festival, which takes place from Tuesday to Saturday. ITV will be carrying live coverage of races from 1.30pm to 6pm each day on ITV1, STV, ITVX and STV Player, with coverage of the last race of the day moving to ITV4 at 5.50pm.
Ruth added: “'ITV's coverage of Ascot will be on, but we will be next Monday, same time 12:30pm, until then, have a lovely week. Enjoy the sunshine if you have it. Bye!”
To fill the gap before Royal Ascot coverage kicks off, This Morning will air for an extra 30 minutes this week only. Loose Women will return to screens in its usual 12.30pm slot on Monday, June 23.
It comes amid a huge change for ITV’s daytime schedule, with sweeping cuts announced. Good Morning Britain is to be extended by 30 minutes from January 2026, while shows such as Lorraine and Loose Women face schedule cuts amid cost and staff-cutting measures.
Lorraine, hosted by Lorraine Kelly, has been cut by 30 minutes and will no longer continued to broadcast 52 weeks of the year, instead being cut to only 30. Loose Women also face a similar cut and will only broadcast for 30 weeks of the year instead of all-year round. Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women will also be broadcast from a new shared location in central London.
It was also reported by the MailOnline that Loose Women is set to lose its live audience as part of the sweeping cuts. A source told the outlet: “The panelists are really upset over the decision to axe the live studio audience from the show. It's what sets the series apart from the rest of ITV daytime and now there are massive fears that viewers will switch off completely.
“The only concern now is to cut costs and having a live studio audience can be expensive, with the added need for security and a warmup artist. Presenters already know how it feels to broadcast the show without an audience because that's what happened during the pandemic, and they all know it creates low mood and lack of atmosphere.”
Loose Women panelist Nadia Sawalha spoke out against the cuts, saying on her YouTube channel: “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.”
She added: “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.
“A lot of my friends and colleagues on this show and have worked for ITV have been there for decades… and I can’t tell you how upsetting it was to see people walking around numb with shock and fear about what they are going to do… (when) television is coming very slowly to its natural end.”