Hard day’s Knight puts her in power position at Nine

It is hard to imagine what was going through journalist Deborah Knight’s mind when she decided her new Monday to Friday gig as host of Nine’s Today show host was a bit light on, workload wise.

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It is hard to imagine what was going through journalist Deborah Knight’s mind when she decided her new Monday to Friday gig as host of Nine’s Today show host was a bit light on, workload wise.

It could hardly have been that 17 hours of live television a week isn’t enough for a busy mother-of-three who, from what I’ve seen, seems to rather like her children.

Ego-wise, Knight’s doesn’t seem to be out of control.

Deb Knight with TODAY Show co-host Georgie Gardner.

She also doesn’t strike you as being the emotionally needy type who only truly feels alive under a spotlight before an adoring audience.

Yet for reasons only Knight can explain, when the out-of-the-blue offer came to replace Karl Stefanovic on the Today show in December, Knight said yes — and then put her hand up to keep the Friday and Saturday evening news reading shifts as well. (Sunday night was already taken by Peter Overton.)

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It was a move that ensured Knight is now ensconced in Nine’s Willoughby bunker six days a week and makes her the hardest working woman on Australian television, something worthy of the industry’s respect.

Last week, Knight’s workload further increased when she was tapped by news bosses to co-host Nine’s coverage of the NSW State Election, alongside Overton, long into the evening on Saturday night.

Inside sources say the decision to work this hard was made because Knight feared her big break might not come again — a break that has proven her talent and capacity for work.

On a salary of what is said to be $650,000 a year — $100,000 less than Gardner’s it’s ,claimed — Nine is certainly getting its money’s worth.

Deb Knight and Peter Overton during Nine’s NSW state election coverage last weekend.

Knight’s stamina would make another woman — and should make Today show co-host Georgie Gardner — nervous, particularly as Knight, in signing on for the Friday and Saturday night news-reading shifts, has blocked Gardner’s retreat to the safety of the job she had before Today if the double-woman hosting experiment should fail.

She is also clearly the better interviewer.

Nine insiders hint that there has been some tension between the two women.

As with some of radio’s more successful pairings — Martin and Molloy, Merrick and Rosso,
HG Nelson and Roy Slaven — the natural on-air banter does not come easily, and is largely conserved for when the camera light or radio mic is on.

When off-air, the women have next to nothing to do with each other, though it again is Knight who does the heavy lifting when it comes to feeding a social media monster that is never happy with her hair.

The social media monster is never happy with Knight’s hair. Picture: Today Show

Hair matters on television. A lot.

Which might explain recent reports claiming Knight has been instructed to keep her hair either shorter or longer than Gardner’s to ensure the two women don’t look too much alike … which is kind of hard, because they kind of do to bleary-eyed television surfers flicking around the dial at 6am.

Knight’s willingness to be flexible and play second fiddle to Gardner has not gone unnoticed at Nine. Where once it was Gardner who sat in the middle, between Knight and newsreader Tom Steinfort, on the Today lounge in program promos, it is now Knight who has increasingly found herself in the central power position.

Eight years after joining Nine, Knight, at 46, is finally enjoying the success she deserves — a fact that one day soon may mean she’s free to choose the length of her hair.

Originally published as Hard day’s Knight puts her in power position at Nine