Karl Stefanovic’s return to Today: Ratings reveal whether it was worth it
The much anticipated TV ratings for the morning show war have dropped – and they have delivered a mixed bag.
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Both sides had something to crow about after the first official round of the 2020 breakfast war.
Karl Stefanovic’s much-publicised return to Today on Monday appears to have been successful, but there’s still a long way to go to catch Sunrise.
More than 225,000 viewers in the five major metropolitan cities tuned in to watch the new look Today team’s official launch on Monday.
It still trailed Sunrise by 68,000 people, but managed to snatch audience share from its arch rival in three cities at peak times during the broadcast.
The new-look team of Stefanovic and Allison Langdon jumped the gun with an unofficial launch on Saturday, which proved to be the fourth most-watched episode of Today in the past 12 months, despite the lack of promotion.
Channel 9 made the 11th hour decision to launch Today two days earlier than planned to cover the bushfire crisis and to get a running start on their rivals.
Media analyst Steve Allen said Channel 9 would have plenty to cheer about today, but it remained to be seen whether it would be a case of here today, gone tomorrow with viewers.
“It’s a good start for Today but we will not know the full story for several weeks,” he said.
“Today was hovering below 200,000 viewers for most of 2019 so the fact that we have seen the ratings lift above 200,000 is a victory for them.”
Seven was clearly wary about Stefanovic’s return, calling David Koch and Sam Armytage back from their holidays a week early so that the two teams could go head-to-head on Monday.
The network pulled out all the stops too with an exclusive interview with Terri Irwin and Armytage reporting from a helicopter hovering above the blaze on the NSW south coast.
Mr Allen said Seven would be thrilled that the gap between the two shows had not closed despite the lift in Today’s viewers.
“Look, it’s a good result for Today but there are two caveats,” he said.
“The first is the interest in the bushfires will be artificially inflating the ratings for all breakfast shows – Today, Sunrise and the ABC- as more people tune in to see the latest news on the fires.
“The second caveat is curiosity. A lot of people will be tuning in to see Karl and the new team.”
Mr Allen said it appeared that Nine made the right call to return Stefanovic to the helm of the show, adding that Langdon is a much better fit as his co-host than Georgie Gardner.
“I watched some of Today on Saturday and it was pretty good. The team seemed comfortable and relaxed, which was a marked difference to what we saw in the early days of 2019 (when Gardner and Deb Knight fronted the show), which felt clunky and wooden.”
Certainly, if the ratings are anything to go by, there was more viewer interest in Stefanovic and Langdon than there was when Gardner and Knight debuted in 2019.
Just 197,000 viewers watched the new pair compared to Sunrise’s 266,000.
It had been expected back then that Today would have experienced a ratings spike with viewers tuning in to see Gardner and Knight in the hot seats, given the blaze of publicity over the groundbreaking move of having two women front the show.
But, in that case, publicity didn’t translate into audience numbers and marked the beginning of a steady decline for the show in 2019.
Nine had to bite the bullet and bring their star back from exile for 2020.
Based on Monday’s result they have some reason to be happy with that decision.