I was watching the TODAY show on Channel Nine the other morning and noticed that Karl Stephanovic was not wearing a tie. They were discussing this on the show, I thought no more of it.
I was then watching the show, yesterday morning, and observed, to my surprise that Karl had brought the tie back from the closet. The question is why? Was it to casual, or did they realise they should stop mimicking Seven’s Sunrise, where Kochie does not wear a tie?
I think that TODAY has lost its identity ever since Steve Liberman left the show. I used to watch TODAY but now I am a Sunrise fan. The reason is that TODAY use to be a good news show, whereas Sunrise was more relaxed, like ‘9am with Dave and Kim’ or ‘KAK’, whereas TODAY use to be good news analysis but at the moment is trying to be a mix of both and it is just not working.
I think the producers at TODAY, and the management staff including Jeffrey Browne and PBL Media’s Ian Law need to sit down and see what direction they want to go with TODAY. If the are going to offer a product similar to that of Sunrise, they should clearly set out to achieve that. Otherwise, go back to the good old days, be more formal, offer the viewer something different, so they will have a choice rather than having two products of same content, but one with more quality.
Maybe the decision of Nine to bring back the dots on promos, involving its new logo, is a sign that Nine now realises it use to be the unquestionable news leader and news breaker in Australia and the TODAY show was a key component of that winning formula.
The old TODAY is maybe what Nine needs to take it into a prosperous future after the departure of outgoing Nine Network CEO Mr Eddie McGuire. It will be interesting to see how Lisa Wilkinson performs and whether a new co-host will lead to a different tact into the future.