The battle for breakfast television has tightened dramatically with Nine’s Today moving past Seven’s Sunrise this week with its best early ratings season launch in eight years.
The development comes as something of a surprise after Today struggled with its ratings in the summer break while the show’s regular hosts were on holiday. By contrast, Sunrise kept a roster of its hosts on air.
This week – the second of the official ratings year – Today has won four consecutive days – and will ultimately win the week, according to preliminary OzTAM ratings.
Yesterday Today again won with 374,000 capital city viewers to Sunrise’s 362,000.
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Sunrise has led the ratings race since 2004.
New executive producer Neil Breen, who joined Today after previously editing Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph, told Mumbrella that Nine’s overall performance was helping the show.
Breen added: “The former executive producer Tom Malone laid the foundation last year when Today became solidly competitive with Sunrise again, and we’re building on that this year.
“We’re not claiming victory here – there have been nine official ratings days so far this year and Sunrise is ahead five to four.”
“It is still very intense, but we’re going well so far,” he said.
“I have to say I’ve been very impressed with the team here. The on-air hosts are the rock stars, the band, but behind the scenes team, the roadies, are so dedicated and it’s a great team to work with. Nobody says ‘no’.”
Breen admitted he spent the summer learning how the show was put to air after a career in newspapers and magazines.
Sunrise EP Michael Pell – who last month suggested it was “old school thinking” by his rival to take hosts off air during a non-ratings period – was unavailable for comment today.
Seven won primetime in last night’s ratings, with My Kitchen Rules dominating all demographics with a total 1.862m viewers, while Nine’s The Block: All Stars ran fourth overall with 980,000 tuned in – but was the second most watched show in 16-49-year-olds.
Ten again ran fourth behind ABC1.
Program rankings
1. My Kitchen Rules – Seven 1.862m
2. Nine News – Nine 1.118m
3. Seven News – Seven 1.063m
4. The Block – Nine 980,000
5. Today Tonight – Seven 933,000
6. Home and Away – Seven 908,000
7. A Current Affair – Nine 889,000
8. ABC News – ABC 878,000
9. Bones – Seven 851,000
10. 7:30 – ABC 656,000
11. Catalyst – ABC 618,000
12. Hot Seat – Nine 584,000
13. The Mentalist – Nine 578,000
14. Ten News – Ten 578,000
15. Hot Property – Nine 564,000
Network rankings
- Seven: 27.2%
- Nine: 19.4%
- ABC1: 12.4%
- Ten: 9.5%
- SBS1: 4.9%
- GO!: 4.2%
- 7TWO: 4.0%
- Eleven: 3.5%
- One: 3.4%
- 7mate: 3.2%
- ABC2: 3.0%
- Gem: 2.5%
- ABC News 24: 1.2%
- ABC3: 1%
- SBS2: .6%
- NITV: 0.1%
Source: OzTam
Marcus Casey