Kellie Sloane applauds Samantha Armytage, warns on intense scrutiny

Former Today show presenter Kellie Sloane says she is concerned by the amount of personal scrutiny breakfast TV stars are being subjected to.

Former Today show host Kellie Sloane: ‘It’s this double-edged sword: the person who has that X-factor on breakfast TV is someone who is, of course, very interesting.’ Picture: John Feder

Former Today show presenter Kellie Sloane says she is concerned by the amount of personal scrutiny breakfast TV stars are being subjected to by insatiable “click bait” media outlets and applauded Samantha Armytage’s decision to walk away from Seven’s Sunrise on her own terms.

“I felt so pleased when I saw the announcement about Sam leaving Sunrise because I think Sam’s been an absolute star on the show and that she’s really shone in that (hosting) role,” Sloane told The Australian.

“But that role has also brought an incredibly — and sometimes unfairly — disproportionate amount of attention on her life outside the box.

“Sam has shown amazing resilience, and I have no doubt that we will see her on our screens again, but I think it’s important she’s been able to take this time out at a time of her choosing.”

Armytage had an increasingly fractured relationship with some sections of the media throughout her eight-year run on the Seven Network’s breakfast TV program, with the 44-year-old accusing some tabloid outlets of body shaming her and inventing invasive stories about her personal life.

In signing off from Sunrise for the final time last week, she conceded the unwanted attention had contributed, in part, to her decision to quit the show, saying: “I never fully understood some of the scrutiny and the snarkiness and the bullying from some aspects of the media.”

Sloane — who appeared as an interim host on both Seven’s Sunrise and rival Nine’s Today show throughout her long-running TV career — knows first-hand the pressure that comes with having your every move dissected while performing over three hours of live television a day.

She was hosting Today alongside Karl Stefanovic in 2007 when she collapsed on air. Vision of her crumpling on-set — which she later attributed to a dizzy spell — went viral on the internet and was later parodied by the ABC’s The Chaser.

While slightly embarrassed by the incident, the former network star said she was just relieved the analysis was confined to her performances on the program.

“I feel very fortunate that when I had my time in the spotlight that the attention was really mild compared to the attention on the breakfast TV stars of today,” the 48-year-old said.

“It’s this double-edged sword: the person who has that X-factor on breakfast TV is someone who is, of course, very interesting.

“But when you have a world that now has a 24-hour news cycle and a lot of online journalism — if you can call it that sometimes — feeding a demand for entertainment news, unfortunately for people who shine and are interesting, they’re going to attract attention that is sometimes unwarranted and really unfair.

“The problem is they start getting treated as characters in a storybook rather than real people, and storylines about them begin to be fed with mistruths and quotes from ‘sources close to the person’ who claim to have some insight because they make for more interesting stories.

“I’m not necessarily talking about some of the mainstream media outlets. I’m talking about some of the fringe outlets and women’s magazines, and some of the stories they publish.”

Like Armytage, Sloane also made the decision to quit TV at a time of her choosing.

Transitioning from life in the newsroom to a role in a boardroom in 2015, she took on a position as the CEO of Life Education NSW before being promoted to the national chief executive role last year.

“People still ask me why I really left television,” she said. “But the truth is it was just time to move on.

“I have always been a highly ambitious person and my decision to leave the media came from a realisation that my ambition levels had dropped and I was feeling unsatisfied.

“That came at a time when I stepped out of the media for a short while to focus on my family and, after a year out, I really didn’t have a strong desire to come back.

“I still had three offers on the table but the role with Life Education came up and I felt really passionate about the work the organisation does in supporting children and young people and wanted to be a part of that.”