News of Karl Stefanovic’s return to Nine’s Today show was met with excitement and relief after ratings dropped to an all-time low during Georgie Gardner and Deb Knight’s stint on the wildly popular breakfast program.
WATCH: Karl Stefanovic digs up embarrassing footage of Allison Langdon
However, it appears as though Karl’s takeover with Allison Langdon hasn’t gone down too well with viewers.
Less than two weeks after taking their seats, the show only attracted a viewing audience of 185, 000 in the capital cities. Meanwhile, a whopping 246,000 tuned into Today’s rival program, Sunrise.
Then, on Tuesday, Today scored 192,000 viewers compared to 268, 000 on Sunrise.
According to last year’s statistics, while Deb and Georgie were hosting the popular morning show, their viewership sat at around 195,000. However, after ratings plummeted to 155,000, Channel Nine made the executive decision to re-hire Karl.
In spite of the unexpectedly low ratings, an industry executive told Confidential that Nine producers aren’t panicking yet, insisting “It is going to be a long game” seeing as “the audience isn’t going to break their viewing habit quickly”. While they aren’t perturbed by the issue, it appears as though Nine got their hopes up too soon, with TV boss Steve Burling admitting last year that he was expecting Karl’s return on January 4 to increase the ratings by 10 per cent.
In November, Karl opened up about returning to the program, admitting he was just as shocked as viewers when they asked him to resume his position.
“It’s not something I thought would ever come up again. I thought my time was up, but then, when I was sounded out about it, it got me thinking. It’s a big job with enormous pressures and I know only too well some of those pitfalls, but it is also without question the best live TV job in Australia.”
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