The first episode with the new new hosting team for THE TODAY SHOW has delivered a strong start for its first weekday outing, offering up an average of 226,000 viewers from 7am-9am Monday 6 January.
Sunrise was the clear winner with 293,000 viewers for the same period, while ABC News Breakfast drew 186,000 viewers across ABC and ABC News.
It’s a buoyant start for Nine’s new brekky team – Karl Stefanovic, Allison Langdon, Tracy Vo, Allex Cullen and Tim Davies – even picking up some important segment wins in the East Coast capitals (e.g. Today won in Sydney 7:30-8:30am; in Melbourne 7-7:30am; and in Brisbane 7:15-7:45am).
This reveals the audience are sampling the revamped line up which will be positive news for executive producer Steve Burling and his team. The new team were intending to start yesterday however were called up and hosted Saturday and Sunday Weekend Today specials covering the NSW and Victorian bushfires, which ran live into Queensland (Sunrise was on delay).
Importantly Today is up 15% on 2019’s new team launch (from 197,000) on 14 January with Georgie Gardner and Deb Knight at the helm.
200,000 viewers remains the critical decision point for Head of News Darren Wick and Burling as they step into the marathon that is breakfast television for 2020 and look to build the show so that it again becomes competitive with Seven’s Sunrise, helmed by long-time EP Michael Pell.
Co-Creator and Viewer’s Advocate for TVBlackbox.com.au, Steve Molk is sharply focused on the business of TV in Australia across all its formats – FTA broadcast, commercial, subscription, BVOD, catch up & SVOD.
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