ABC’s lesson on how to properly farewell breakfast host

THOUGH some of us found her generally too haughty and sanctimonious for breakfast television congratulations this week go to Virginia Trioli and the ABC for managing her departure from News Breakfast with more grace than any in more than a decade.

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THOUGH some of us found her generally too haughty and sanctimonious for breakfast television — not to mention an odd on-air pairing with the stiff and offbeat Michael Rowland — my congratulations this week go to Virginia Trioli and the ABC for managing Trioli’s departure from News Breakfast with more grace than any host’s departure from breakfast television in more than a decade.

Virginia Trioli.

The ABC announced on Friday Trioli will move back to her first love, Melbourne radio, at the end of the year.

She is happy and “absolutely thrilled to be taking on one of the most precious radio jobs (Jon Faine’s) in the country”, the ABC said.

Trioli helped build a strong audience during her
11 years on the program, and those of us that watch and now consider ourselves part of the News Breakfast family (or maybe just refugees from commercial breakfast television) are happy, too.

We like it when TV personalities who have become members of our extended family are treated nicely and respectfully — unlike the way the excellent Lisa Wilkinson was treated after she randomly disappeared from our breakfast routine one October day in 2017 after asking for equal pay to counterpart Karl Stefanovic.

Also, the tearful Melissa Doyle who was wrenched from Sunrise in the middle of 2013 with just a few weeks’ notice after 14 years.
Some will also say like Stefanovic and Weekend Sunrise’s Andrew O’Keefe, whose departures were without fanfare.

In commercial TV, decisions get made quickly and without much thought.

Luckily that’s not the case at the ABC, where, without the pressures of commercial interests, stars get to check out with grace and dignity.

Originally published as ABC’s lesson on how to properly farewell breakfast host