Simon Reeve’s quiet departure from Sunrise had been well documented in the previous thread, now comes the news that he is suing Seven in the Federal Court.
Daily Mail Australia understands the presenter’s lawsuit is about entitlements he believes should have been paid out when he was let go.
At the heart of the legal dispute iswhether he was an employee of Seven - as Reeve argues he was - or an independent contractor at the time.
Seven will be defending the case and is expected to argue Reeve had ‘changed his tune’ on being a contractor after being axed.
I’ve sampled. Their weekday team is ok, but not my preference. I still prefer WS over WT. These days when I visit my parents I quite happily watch Today where once I couldn’t tolerate it at all.
So… I guess Sunrise are lucky atm. If I was a viewer who watched the whole show, I’d be changing channels as I think I’d find Sam unbearable. But as I only see part of the show before work, it’s still ok atm.
Both commercial breakfast shows rated lower on Wednesday but Sunrise did comparatively better opening up a 40,000 gap over Today. News Breakfast improved and was less than 10,000 behind today.
Sunrise won Sydney, Adelaide and Perth, News Breakfast won Melbourne and Today won in Brisbane.
Sunrise won Thursday ratings; it was just under 30,000 ahead of a more competitive Today that saw its audience lift from Wednesday at the expense of News Breakfast that was more than 30,000 behind Today.
Sunrise had a big Sydney audience but Today was competitive drawing its best Sydney audience of the week. News Breakfast continued its winning streak in Melbourne with Sunrise second just ahead of Today. Today continued to win in Brisbane, where Sunrise was third. Sunrise won Adelaide and Perth with today second in both markets.
Overall this is great for the show as viewers can tune in and expect to see the same team each weekday.
But it kind of has a downside for each of the presenters as Kochie and Sam now have to work an extra day, Nat won’t be hosting and is back on news 5 days a week, and Eddy won’t be reading the news 2 days a week and is back on entertainment duties only.
I wonder if Seven will try and keep Kochie from going to watch Port Adelaide’s finals games (except for the GF if Port make it)?
Hard to see how that will make a significant difference. The ratings for days when Kochie and Sam are away aren’t the problem (if anything they are a bit higher!).
The ratings across the board and especially in Melbourne and Brisbane are the problem.
Just goes to show how cocky they are thinking that allowing their two hosts to work 4 days and therefore different news readers etc wouldn’t make a difference.
People love routine and familiarity. This was always going to backfire.
But what can be done to solve them? I know they could rein in Sam’s daily rants but would that work? Or is it that Brisbane and Melbourne are just so rusted on Nine that it wouldn’t work either way.