I think it likely accurately sums up what’s happened though. If one end of the scale is Hitch deciding to scale back his workload and the other end is Nine deciding to demote him (let’s not beat around the bush about what this is), it seems like the latter is what has occurred.
If this was Hitch’s decision, the whole framing of the announcement of the transition to Alicia & Tom would have been different from Hitch being the person to have made the announcement to the messaging being about celebrating Hitch’s 25 years as the lead anchor and the installment of Alicia & Tom as the new weeknight anchors being about building upon Hitch’s standards/professionalism.
That’s the thing I really don’t understand about Tom becoming the co-anchor alongside Alicia. If Nine’s plan has been for the two of them to succeed Hitch, why haven’t they gotten him to do some fill-in stints when Alicia wasn’t available or even do some special reports so that not only he started being part of the Melbourne team but viewers can become familiar with him.
I don’t think it’s a slim chance but rather what has happened. Nine’s plan probably wasn’t to make this announcement at 11am on a Saturday morning but felt they needed to bring it forward because as they now acutely know:
Despite that though, I still think this announcement would have unfolded differently had this been Hitch’s decision to pass the baton to Alicia & Tom and nonetheless, should have been better handled.