What went wrong at Ten Breakfast?

With the dust settled on Ten’s failed entry into the morning television market, Lee Zachariah sifts through the rubble to find out what really went wrong with Breakfast in a feature that first appeared in Encore.

Ten Breakfast billboardA billboard tells a thousand words. In this one, a tall handsome man holds his hand over the mouth of a shorter, less handsome one, as a blonde presenter laughs uproariously and another smiles blankly at the camera. Ten was entering the race for the breakfast TV audience, the billboard told us, and it was placing all of its chips on a man whose number one selling point appeared to be a case of halitosis.

“It’s going to bring a little bit of life back into breakfast television,” Andrew Rochford announced at Ten’s 2012 upfront presentation. Rochford was the tall, handsome one on the billboard. “It’s getting a bit tired nowadays.”

Less than a year later, the presenter, who got his start in the media as a contestant on Nine’s reality series The Block, would quit the show after sagging ratings and palpable on-set tension. It is possible to analyse on-screen body language for signs of antipathy, but the casual viewer didn’t have to look too hard with Breakfast. A couple of months into the show’s run, Rochford had been moved away from the couch-based set and was presenting his own mini-Breakfast show off to the side, barely interacting with the other hosts. Four months in, he would be gone altogether.

Be a member to keep reading

Join Mumbrella Pro to access the Mumbrella archive and read our premium analysis of everything under the media and marketing umbrella.

Become a member

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

"*" indicates required fields

 

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.