ABC2’s News Breakfast Stealing Viewers From Sunrise And Today!

Check out my positive spin! Yes, the brand spankin’ new ABC2 breakfast news program – cleverly titled News Breakfast – has launched, and the Sunrise and Today teams should be quaking in their boots, as the show is already stealing their viewers! Sure, only 8000 for now… but we’ve all gotta start somewhere, right?

What if they launched a live three-hour TV breakfast news show and nobody watched? It was a question the ABC2 News Breakfast team were digesting yesterday. Ratings showed only 8000 people nationally tuned in to watch the digital channel show.

According to OzTam figures (which are not to be questioned), absolutely no one in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth bothered to tune in.

But the OzTam ratings figures recorded zero viewers for the show in Brisbane, Perth and its broadcast home of Melbourne. OzTam recorders aren’t accurate below 1000 viewers but do lump together what viewers there are.

So, officially, 6000 people in Sydney and 1000 in Adelaide watched – meaning the remaining 1000 viewers were scattered across three other cities.

Host Virginia Trioli is looking on the bright side.

Trioli was also philosophical. “It was always going to be a slow build on the digital channel,” she said. “Eight thousand is about what you’d expect.”

It’s a nice, strong number on which to build. Because I don’t have Foxtel or a digital set top box (HOW RETRO/POOR AM I?) I haven’t managed to catch the show myself, but as long as it features a Grant Denyer equivalent delivering the weather, a phone number where excitable viewers can text in their opinions, and a window where I can see chlidren in school uniform waving madly and trying to get their mug on the telly during the live performance of a musical group, I’m supportive. It does have that, right?

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