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Nine drops ‘Australia’s number one breakfast show’ claim amid out of court settlement with Seven

The Nine Network appears to have dropped its claim that Today is ‘the number one breakfast show in Australia’ following an out of court settlement with rival Seven Network.

today

Seven was contesting Nine’s claim, but dropped its legal challenge minutes before a scheduled Federal Court hearing this morning.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed.

However, Nine released a statement reiterating that Today had beaten Sunrise in most weeks in the metros, but failed to repeat its assertion as ‘the nation’s favourite’.

We are pleased Seven has seen fit to drop the case against the Today show. And we congratulate our Today show team on winning the most weeks across the five capital cities for 2016,” Nine said. “We know they will power on for the rest of this year and into 2017,” said a spokesperson in a statement.

Nine had heralded Today as ‘Australia’s favourite breakfast show’, having won 21 weeks out of the 35 so far across the main five metro cities. It is the first time Today has beaten Sunrise by this measure since 2003.

Seven had argued that Nine cannot make the claim to be Australia’s top breakfast show as Sunrise remains ahead on average combined metro and regional audience across the year, a measurement it insisted is more meaningful.

Nine, however, said its rival was being hypocritical, claiming Seven has previously claimed to be Australia’s number one based on metro figures.

In an email to staff, Today executive producer Mark Calvert, branded Seven “bad losers” and likened his rival’s behaviour to both a “narky kid” and to US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

“They are doing this because you have them rattled,” he wrote. “They’re behaving like the narky kid who gets beaten in a kick-about on the oval….so takes his ball home. They’re Donald Trump, only accepting the result if he wins. They’re bad losers. They’ve forgotten that breakfast television is fun.

“We’ll continue to celebrate because as a wise man once said: ‘winners have parties, losers hire barristers’.”

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