Dark days for TODAY as viewers fail to show up

The new team of Georgie Gardner & Deb Knight resoundingly beaten by Sunrise

The ratings are in and the outlook is not good for the new team at the TODAY show after Sunrise took top honours yesterday. Despite plenty of media interest in the new format led by Georgie Gardner and Deb Knight, viewers just didn’t seem to care.

Overall Sunrise had 266,000 viewers in the 5 cap cities compared to TODAY with 197,000. However, there was some good news for the beleaguered Channel NINE show with a win in Sydney. Melbourne continues to be a major problem and it’s one producers are taking seriously, but Adelaide was a complete train wreck with just 8,000 viewers turning up.

The show is broadcasting LIVE into Queensland at the moment, but if more was made of that fact up there it might be enough to get them a win as it is a real point of difference from Sunrise who are on a 1 hour delay.

It’s barely been a month since the shock exit of former Executive Producer Mark Calvert triggered a domino effect that saw the majority of the on-air team sacked or moved on. NINE flagged January 14 as the relaunch date to tie in with their coverage of The Australian Open but it looks to have been a premature launch with scathing reviews flowing in before the show had even finished its first broadcast.

While the show is focusing on news more than entertainment, the format is basically the same as it was last year. There is definitely better chemistry between Gardner and Knight, but there is no sense of fun.

TV Blackbox has heard from multiple sources Tony Jones, who provided most of the laughs on day 1, will only be reading sport Monday’s and Friday’s. It’s believed Tom Steinfort will read news and sport Tuesday – Thursday’s.

For their part, NINE says this was always the plan and they have been “open and upfront” about Jones’ roster from the beginning, although we must be honest and say we were confused about his arrangement with the show.

Women’s Day reports the network has been chasing AFL legend Shane Crawford to become the full-time sports presenter. NINE says this is “utter garbage”.

Nine’s new Director of Morning Television Steve Burling said:

“It was an extremely positive first morning with our new team. There are always challenges when producing an outside broadcast of this size and duration and our on-air team wonderfully covered any early hiccups our production team may have experienced behind the scenes.” 

“The social media response has been overwhelmingly positive which is encouraging although not anything we will judge our performance by.  We know this is a long game and we will continue every day to work hard and improve across the board to provide our audience with the best show we can each and every day.”

 “Seeing our opening shot at 5.30am – with our new team in place – we are completely reassured that we have it right; Deb, Georgie and the team clicked from the get go.”

It’s a strange short-term solution, considering Jones had to leave before the end of the show on Monday due to other commitments.

While we have to acknowledge it’s only day one and this will be an evolving process, it would have been good to have a new vision for the show ready to roll for yesterday’s launch. What we were served up yesterday left most believing it’s going to be a very tough year for the new team at TODAY.