Seven’s Sunrise wins breakfast TV ratings battle for 20th year straight

Seven’s top-rating program Sunrise has claimed the breakfast crown for the 20th year in a row, trouncing rival program Today.

Sunrise hosts Natalie Barr and Matt Shirvington.

Seven’s top-rating program Sunrise has claimed the breakfast crown for the 20th year in a row, trouncing rival program Today.

Seven’s daily duo – David Koch and Natalie Barr until June, then Barr and Matt Shirvington – have fronted Sunrise, which has topped the daily ratings nationally and across the five major capital cities.

Latest figures from ratings firm OzTAM showed that nationally in the ratings year-to-date results, an average of367,000 daily viewers have tuned into Sunrise compared to Nine’s Today show, hosted by Karl Stefanovic and Sarah Abo, which has an average audience of 282,000 daily viewers.

In the five capital cities, Sunrise is also well ahead in the survey results, drawing a daily audience of 219,000 viewers, compared to Today’s 189,000 viewers.

The official ratings season does not finish until December 2, but Seven’s director of morning television, Sarah Stinson, said two decades at No.1 was a “remarkable” feat.

“You need to keep reinventing things and evolving and you don’t keep the No.1 timeslot if you don’t evolve and move to the future,” she said.

“This year there’s certainly been a lot of change across our slate and fortunately it’s worked.”

Sunrise executive producer Sean Power has spearheaded the show which reaches 4.2 million viewers nationally while Weekend Sunrise reaches 2.9 million viewers. Weekend Sunrise is hosted by Monique Wright and Matt Doran.

Veteran Sunrise host David Koch hosted the weekday program for 21 years before departing three months ago, and shortly after announcing his exit he criticised the impact of social media on TV personalities.

David Koch on his last day at Sunrise.

He told The Australian at the time: “When you are doing three and three quarter hours a day of live TV, you cannot pretend to be something you’re not.

“I’m not woke and you can’t pretend to be woke if you’re not.

“You can’t fake who you are, because you’ll get found out.”

Stinson, who began her role as morning TV director 18 months ago, said there was always a “sense of relief” to win the ratings.

“You give it everything you’ve got and you’re only as good as the team that you play with,” she said.

“We come into each year and want to remain dominant and we work to remain not only No.1 but maintaining that margin to make sure we have the most amount of viewers.

“We’ve worked really hard in moving the dial this year and we’ve overseen a lot of geographical and generational change with the new host (Shirvington).”