Today‘s newest breakfast hosts Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon are off to a solid start, averaging 225,000 metro viewers on the show’s Monday morning premier.
While the new breakfast team was due to start Monday morning, the duo was bought back even earlier for a special Saturday morning bushfire segment, which saw an average of 231,000 metro viewers tune in.
Though the first official episode on Monday delivered Nine a decent start, the buzz around Stefanovic’s return wasn’t enough to beat rival Seven’s Sunrise, which garnered 293,000 eyeballs. ABC News Breakfast saw 186,000 Australians tune in.
Interestingly, Today‘s new team launch is up 15 per cent from 2019 (197,000) when Georgie Gardner and Deb Knight took the reins, which hopefully points to good news for Nine’s embattled breakfast show.
Nine director of morning television Steven Burling said the feedback has so far been “positive”.
He added: “The bushfire crisis is affecting all Australians, and Today’s special coverage has been widespread, thorough and at times confronting, with our new line-up ensuring viewers are kept up-to-date with the latest news.”
Nine had a standout year in 2019, celebrating its best rating share performance of all time, winning the year and ending Seven’s 12 years of dominance. The perennially struggling Today was its weak spot, so it will prove interesting to see how Stefanovic and Langdon will fare on the breakfast spot.
However, B&T understands Today’s 2019 performance had little impact on Nine’s bottom line, as most of its revenue comes from prime time evening shows.
B&T also understands the Australia breakfast market is worth between $110-120 million, Today still earning between 45 per cent to 50 per cent share.
Nonetheless, breakfast TV is often touted as a marathon and not a sprint, and time will tell who will come out on top in the battle of the breakfast war.
