Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson have finally done it: they have defeated Sunrise.
In their tenth year co-hosting Channel Nine's Today, the pair have claimed their first annual victory over Seven's long-reigning breakfast show
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The last time Today finished on top was in 2003, with Steve Liebmann and Tracy Grimshaw presenting.
Stefanovic joined in 2005 – while Today was being trounced by Sunrise's David "Kochie" Koch and Melissa Doyle. By then, Nine had hired and fired numerous hosts in a bid to re-gain its crown – including its infamous "boning" of Jessica Rowe.
When Wilkinson joined Stefanovic in 2007, they trailed Sunrise by a whopping average of 160,000 city viewers. They always said it would be a slow build (and they were right). As they broadcast from major cities and regional towns, and did endless interviews, they built a following.
"On day three of Karl and I starting together, there was a particularly nasty email that came in," Wilkinson tells Fairfax Media.
"It was back in the day when the Today show was the favourite whipping boy ... and Karl turned to me and held my hand and said, 'If this is going to work, we've got to forget about all of that. We've just got to do good journalism, enjoy ourselves, and the rest will come.' And 10 years later, it's happened."
"For a while there, the Today show was looking over its shoulder ... Sunrise had burst out the blocks [in 2003] with a very cleverly branded product, and they had a great executive producer in Adam Boland. Kudos to [Today's former executive producer] Tom Malone, who realised that looking over your shoulder gets you nowhere. We had to be our own breakfast show, not somebody else's re-cooked version of one."
![Breakfast battle: <i>Sunrise's</i> David Koch and Samantha Armytage and </i>Today's Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson.](/web/20161023103135im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/m/y/u/z/p/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gs54di.png/1477102433007.jpg)
In breakfast TV, the challenge is threefold: get people to try you, make them loyal, then keep them watching for longer.
On Saturday, Stefanovic and Wilkinson notched up 21 metropolitan weekly ratings wins. This makes Today unbeatable in 2016, Nine says, because there are only 40 official ratings weeks in a year. (The network has long used this standard to bestow medals upon its news and current affairs shows.) With five weeks to go, and Today beating Sunrise by an average of just 2000 city viewers in the past five days, it was a tight win.
![In their tenth year as co-hosts, Stefanovic and Wilkinson have finally defeated </i>Sunrise</i>.](/web/20161023103135im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/o/l/4/a/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gs54di.png/1477102433007.png)
But its rival is having none of it. "That is a bit like a half-time victory lap," a Seven spokesman says.
Seven points out that once regional audiences are added, Sunrise (now hosted by Koch and Samantha Armytage) leaps ahead. When it comes to city viewers, the spokesman insists, annual average audiences trump weekly wins. By this measure, a victor can only be determined at the end of the 40-week cycle.
![Former <i>Sunrise</i> co-host Melissa Doyle with David 'Kochie' Koch, in 2005.](/web/20161023103135im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/1/1/3/j/w/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gs54di.png/1477102433007.jpg)
It's no surprise the networks are loggerheads. Every week, several million Australians watch at least a few minutes of Sunrise, Today or ABC News Breakfast. And the commercial programs rake in millions in sponsorship dollars.
But their influence extends beyond their advertising power. When Sunrise toppled Today, in 2004, the industry took notice. Was Seven now poised to usurp Nine, and seize the title of Australia's most-watched network?
![Steve Liebmann had two stints co-hosting Nine's <i>Today</i>, across the eighties, nineties and naughts.](/web/20161023103135im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/1/3/e/k/w/n/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gs54di.png/1477102433007.jpg)
In many media reports, Sunrise and Seven were cast as plucky upstarts to arrogant Nine. This all but guaranteed Seven the momentum it needed and, in 2007, it dethroned the king.
Twelve years on, it's a different scenario. There is little novelty in Sunrise winning another year. Whenever Stefanovic and Wilkinson came close to eclipsing their rivals, however, they sparked a flurry of stories. In the world of commercial breakfast TV, Nine's hosts were now the underdogs. And in this industry, perception matters.
This shouldn't be overstated, though; Sunrise still has a huge and loyal audience. As recently as October 17, it averaged 540,000 viewers this year, including regional audiences, to Today's 475,000. (Despite each show attracting a few million viewers per week, their average audiences appear small because no one watches from start to finish.)
Still, Sunrise once enjoyed a daily lead of 200,000 city viewers. Now, Today boasts that it has already won the lucrative metropolitan market for this year. Whichever way you slice the figures, Seven and Nine will fight even harder to build their audiences – and steal each other's.
"Remote controls are very easy things to have sitting next to you," Wilkinson says. "Viewers make a decision, every single minute, about which show they want to watch."
She confirms she and Stefanovic will return as hosts in 2017, and describes their partnership as "an on-air marriage".
"I have my off-air husband in Pete [FitzSimons] and my on-air husband in Karl. We're different in so many ways, and we worked out early on that's a real strength for us."
But this is not just a victory for the hosts, she stresses. "We're the ones who get the glory but this is a much bigger operation than what you see on air. It's totally a team effort."
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