Who are Today’s newly announced 2020 recruits?

When she landed her first major hosting role, viewers were outraged. Now Nine is counting on Rebecca Maddern to help turn Today around.

After a year of plunging ratings and drama surrounding Today’s 2019 line-up, Nine bosses have installed a panel of new faces to join returning host Karl Stefanovic on-air in 2020.

Stefanovic will be back in the host’s chair a little over a year after he was dramatically ousted from the role, this time joined by co-host Allison Langdon.

And today it’s been announced that Tracy Vo will join the team as newsreader, Tim Davies as weather presenter, Alex Cullen as sports presenter and Rebecca Maddern as Weekend Today’s new co-host.

There’s a lot riding on this new team after Today’ s disastrous 2019, with a new-look line-up not able to prevent a dramatic ratings slide throughout the year. Nine will no doubt be hoping these new faces can turn the show’s fortunes around.

So who are these new additions to the Today team?

REBECCA MADDERN

Rebecca Maddern will host Weekend Today. Picture: SDP/Supplied

The most high-profile of Today’s new recruits, Maddern is best known for her work on The Footy Show and Ninja Warrior Australia. She’ll host Weekend Today with Richard Wilkins, moving him from his usual role on Today during the week.

Former Seven journalist Maddern, 42, has been the subject of controversy during her tenure at Nine, starting before she’d even appeared on-air: On the eve of her debut appearance on The Footy Show in 2016, colleague Sam Newman sparked a backlash when he referred to her as “not good looking” and “plumpish” during a radio interview.

“She’s pretty ordinary really,” he said. “I’m not sure if she’s Mrs Maddern, I’m not sure what to call her.

“She’s been married a couple of times someone said. I might discuss how she found matrimonial life because I can speak voluminously about that.”

Maddern married second husband, cameraman Trent Miller, in 2014. The couple had a baby daughter in April 2018.

When she started the gig, Maddern was met with a flood of sexist abuse from outraged viewers who dismissed her appointment as “politically correct nonsense”, as were “not interested in a woman talking about footy”.

A year after those infamous comments from Newman – and after a backlash from some viewers about her addition to the previously all-male AFL Footy Show panel – Maddern conceded she’d been naive when signing up to the show, but said she was happy she did.

“It was either going to be a spectacular fail or be spectacularly good. I don’t think there was going to be a middle. I was prepared to take the punt. And I was at an age where I thought, ‘What have I got to lose?’” she told The Daily Telegraph of taking the gig.

“One of the reasons I said yes was that I couldn’t bear turning on the TV and watching someone else do it.”

Maddern lasted two years on The Footy Show, departing a year before it was axed after 25 years on-air. By then, she’d moved on to bigger and better things, with a starring role in one of Nine’s biggest successes in recent years.

The first season of Australian Ninja Warrior was an enormous ratings success, with more than two million Australians tuning in to the 2017 season finale. While two subsequent seasons haven’t repeated that spectacular success, the show remains a bankable ratings winner for Nine, with Maddern and Ben Fordham its popular co-hosts.

ALEX CULLEN

Alex Cullen was a familiar face on Seven for more than a decade.

Cullen certainly landed on his feet after the shock axing of Seven’s flagship current affairs program Sunday Night in October. Cullen, 39, had been one of Sunday Night’s star reporters since joining the show in 2010. Sunday Night was created as Seven’s answer to Nine’s 60 Minutes but in recent times suffered in the ratings against that current affairs juggernaut.

Late in November, it was announced Cullen, who welcomed twins with wife Bonnie Campbell in January, was joining Nine, filling in as sports reporter on Today. Barely a month later, that fill-in gig has turned into a full-time job.

TRACY VO

Stefanovic and Langdon will be joined on the desk by Perth reporter Tracy Vo in the newsreader role. Vo’s arrival confirms the departure of Tom Steinfort, who left flagship current affairs program 60 Minutes to join Today this year.

News.com.au understands part of Vo’s appeal for Today lies in her popularity and recognition among Western Australian viewers – Vo has been a popular on-air presence with viewers “out west” since she returned to her home state in 2012 following stints in Sydney and Canberra.

Vo, 35, is good friends with fellow Nine personality Sylvia Jeffreys, who will next year fill the Today Extra co-hosting chair vacated by Sonia Kruger.

“Building really solid friendships like Sylvia Jeffreys and Amelia Adams, they’re still two of my closest friends, despite being on the other side of the country,” Vo recently told Nine Honey.

Vo is also an accomplished author, with her book Small Bamboo: How My Family’s Journey on a Leaky Boat Led to Our Wonderful Life in Australia published in 2014. In it, she told the story of her parents’ perilous journey from war-torn Vietnam in 1978 to start a new life as refugees in Australia. Vo has previously opened up about the struggles she faced growing up as an Australian of Vietnamese heritage. “Kids who come from different backgrounds or their parents are refugees, I think there is a difficulty because they don’t really know where they belong,” she told Perth Now in 2014.

“You hear a lot from people who say, ‘What’s their identity? Are they Australian? Are they from somewhere else?’ And that’s how I felt for a very long time. I wasn’t sure where I belonged.”

TIM DAVIES

Sydney reporter Tim Davies, who viewers will recognise from Weekend Today, will replace Steve Jacobs as weather presenter. The popular Jacobs was a surprise loss from Today’s 2020 line-up, but news.com.au understands the regular travel required in the weather reporter role was proving difficult for the father-of-two, who split from his wife last year.

Currently the Weekend Today weather presenter and a Nine News reporter, Davies joined Nine in 2014 following a long career in commercial radio – he served as a newsreader on The Kyle and Jackie O Show for several years – and a stint on Seven across Weekend Sunrise, The Morning Show & Sunrise.

In a post to Instagram today, Davies said he was “thrilled” to be joining Today full time in 2020: “After 5+ years with @9news it’ll be hard to hand over my little blue microphone cube & leave an incredible newsroom … The new year will bring so many new adventures & I hope you come along for the ride.”