Question Time (TV programme) being taken off the air, and the death of an audience member who collapsed while recording. The programme continued to enjoy good ratings during this period, notably on the day of Margaret Thatcher's resignation on 22 November 1990, which featured two different panels over two editions. David Dimbleby was chosen to succeed Peter Sissons as the programme’s presenter in 1994, after the BBC decided to hold two pilot show auditions between Dimbleby and Jeremy Paxman with two different audiences and two different panels. For a brief period under Dimbleby’s chairmanship in the mid-1990s there were a number of variations to
BBC One of "Breakfast Time" was shown on BBC One, becoming the first UK wide breakfast television service and continued to lead in the ratings until 1984. In 1984, Bill Cotton become managing director of Television at the BBC, and set about overhauling BBC1, which had been slated for poor home grown shows, its heavy reliance on US imports, with "Dallas" and "The Thorn Birds" being BBC1's highest rated programmes and ratings being over 20% behind ITV. Cotton recruited Michael Grade to become Controller of BBC One, the first time the Corporation had recruited someone outside of the BBC, replacing Alan Hart,