No karaoke, but LaTrioli and Michael Rowland hit the right notes for breakfast

A NEW contender has emerged in the breakfast TV wars — and this ‘stunt-free alternative’ is proving more than just a wake-up call for Sunrise and Today.

Brekkie TV’s wakeup call

THEY’VE hosted big names including Quentin Tarantino and Cyndi Lauper in the past fortnight, but Virginia Trioli and ABC News Breakfast co-anchor Michael Rowland didn’t consider re-enacting a scene from Kill Bill or a True Colours karaoke tribute to boost their coverage.

ABC News Breakfast has emerged as the quiet achiever of breakfast television — having almost doubled its viewers in the past two years, as the battle between the big guns, Channel Seven’s Sunrise and Channel Nine’s Today, intensifies with a viewer margin of just 10,000 separating them.

News Breakfast’s average viewer figures of 142,000 a day is less than half of the 300,000 to 350,000 Sunrise and Today draw, but has grown by 48 per cent in two years.

Earlier this week, an opinion piece about why this story’s author had had a bellyful of commercial free-to-air breakfast television, its manufactured laughs, shorter segments and stunts, drew plenty of comment from viewers claiming they’d made the switch to ABC, or were planning to.

And that anecdotal evidence is backed up by the numbers, with News Breakfast executive producer Erin Vincent saying some of the show’s viewer traffic has detoured away from the big guns as people seek a stunt-free morning alternative.

“Our numbers are up 17 per cent on this time last year, and 48 per cent since the end of 2013,” Vincent said. (Those average weekly five-city ratings are drawn by combining viewer numbers from ABC News Breakfast’s simulcast on ABC’s main channel and ABC News 24).

The average metro average audience for News Breakfast has grown from 96,000 at the end of 2013 to 142,000 at the end of 2015 — a 48 per cent increase in 2 years.

The big change came in 2013, when News Breakfast changed its tone and expanded its news coverage ‘in terms of what we talked about and how we addressed it’, says Vincent.

“We decided to not be afraid to talk about anything that was interesting. For far too long we were really just focused on getting the news right.

“In 2013 we started asking ‘what are people talking about? What do they want to know about? What are they interested in and how can we do it in an intelligent way?’.

Breakfast success: LaTrioli. Picture: Supplied by ABC

“Michael and Virginia come at things from very different angles but they are very good at presenting very different sides of cases.

“It wasn’t so much a matter of taking inspiration from the success of Sunrise and Today, more we just asked the question about what is interesting and ‘why haven’t we covered this in the past?’

“There wasn’t really a reason — we had just fallen into what was just the rhythm of news.

“I must admit when we first started I kept waiting for the tap on the shoulder saying ‘what the hell have you done to our program?’ and it never came.”

News Breakfast now pulls bigger names — with actors, musicians and politicians increasingly factoring the show into their media schedules.

“Increasingly they are coming to us — this year we’ve had Quentin Tarantino, Tom Jones, Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein. And even if the same actor, musician or politician does all three programs I think you will see the treatment is very different,” says Vincent.

The presenter line-up hasn’t changed since 2013, but Trioli and Rowland continue to relax into their presenting relationship.

“In breakfast TV the personality element does come into play and Michael and Virginia have embraced that — viewers now know more about them and their personalities,” says Vincent..

“Audiences respond well when they are giving a bit more of themselves on air.

“The observation that has constantly come back to me is that we are now a refreshing alternative in the mornings.”

Ratings are on the up, but Trioli won’t be belting out karaoke anytime soon.

“But she has got an excellent voice — she did deliver Michael an on air Happy Birthday — with a Mr President-style delivery and she has quite the vocal range,” says Vincent.

REVIEW:

I ACCEPTED an invite to catch ABC News Breakfast.

How could I not when host Virginia Trioli issued it personally — (well, kind of — it was via twitter and @LaTrioli is savvy enough to spot a publicity opportunity when she sees it — hence the tweet: “Debbie, come join us on @BreakfastNews! I think you’d like it!)

The verdict? I could get used to it. Certainly it’s a change of pace.

Debbie, come join us on @BreakfastNews ! I think you'd like it! Today, Sunrise: Why I’m switching off morning TV https://t.co/2lXZzVta7m

— Virginia Trioli (@LaTrioli) February 16, 2016

Sometimes I feel Trioli and Rowland lack the easy rapport and chemistry seen between Sunrise and Today presenters, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I could cope with the occasional bit of awkward in place of forced hilarity and the feeling that I’m an outsider who is no longer in on the joke.

There was humour, but it was largely left to the experts.

The presenters weren’t playing for big laughs. I would have liked Vanessa O’Hanlon to loosen up with the weather — but that may be my short attention span (I’m a slow starter in the morning) and commercial TV roots showing.

The stories weren’t overblown, or over-promoted. Nor were they too stitched up or staid.

In essence — News Breakfast was what it says on the can — interesting, informative, diverse, not too stitched up … and not a lame skit or a karaoke machine in sight.

Originally published as No karaoke, but LaTrioli and Michael Rowland hit the right notes for breakfast