Gone Today, Georgie seeks new tomorrow
Deborah Knight and Tom Steinfort pay tribute to absent co-host who walked out after being dumped.
After a horror ratings year, two of the dumped hosts of Today, Deborah Knight and Tom Steinfort, this morning paid tribute to fellow co-host Georgie Gardner.
Gardner immediately walked out of the show on Friday after Karl Stefanovic was re-signed to return to the hosting role alongside Allison Langdon.
This morning Knight and Steinfort, who have been left as fill-in hosts, spoke about the turmoil at the show.
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“We wanted to acknowledge our colleague and friend Georgie Gardner,” Knight told viewers.
“You might have read over the weekend that Georgie has left the Today show. After a really challenging year we want to wish Georgie all the very best.”
Steinfort then added: “She has been a committed and passionate member of the team here. I think particularly when she’s been sharing the stories of every day Australians who are doing it tough; these are issues that she wanted to focus on.
“She has always been a woman of strength here, a woman of class, and also who could forget very wicked sense of humour that would just pop up from time to time as well.”
Knight than awkwardly said of her co-presenter’s role at the show: “She gave it a red hot go.”
“For now though, Georgie is enjoying the time with her family, friends, taking Wilbur the dog (for a walk) and we look forward to seeing you on our screens again very soon.”
“Enjoy the sleep ins,” Steinfort told Gardner.
The Today show will be forced into a stopgap hosting line-up after Gardner walked out of the Nine Network breakfast program when it was confirmed she and co-host Knight were to be replaced by Stefanovic and Langdon next year.
Gardner, who has hosted for the past two years amid plummeting ratings, has walked away from the 5.30am-9am show, but Knight will stay on for now.
Nine will have to pull together a hosting team with the rattled network refusing to say who will host despite there being three more weeks still remaining in the ratings year.
Gardner’s exit follows an exclusive report in The Australian last week that Stefanovic, who was axed from the breakfast program last year, had been called on to save it on the condition he take a pay cut to his $2m-a-year package.
Gardner was seen enjoying her first day of leave yesterday walking her dog in Sydney, a day after the decision to bring back Stefanovic alongside 60 Minutes reporter Langdon was officially announced in Nine newspapers on Saturday.
A statement from Nine’s director of news, Darren Wick, said the “bold decision” to try something new on Today had “not worked for the audience”.
“Georgie is a person of great integrity who has given everything for the past two years in hosting one of the most demanding and high-profile shows on television,” Wick said. “She’s loved and admired by her colleagues and she cares passionately about the stories she tells.”
In a separate statement, Gardner said it had been a privilege to work on the show and that she had “no regrets”, but admitted the public scrutiny had been “daunting” and “disproportionate”.
“I was consulted two weeks ago about the future direction of the Today show, and naturally I’m disappointed with the outcome,” Gardner said. “However, I’m very proud to have been part of an innovative and progressive programming decision — the first female hosting duo in Australian breakfast television.”
Today has struggled to hit the 200,000-viewer mark in the past few weeks. On Friday it pulled a metropolitan audience of 191,000.
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