Samantha Armytage = the Kerri-Anne Kennerley of the Late 2030s/Early 2040s, probably.
That’s exactly the type of format I can see Sunrise (and even Today, at least to some extent) moving towards in the future.
I personally don’t find Karl Stefanovic to be particularly likeable or credible these days, but each to their own.
And interesting their local push includes “the team Qld trusts” in their promo as they show Sam and Kochie. I’m not so sure these days…
Sam has gotten too big for her boots over the last year or so I think.
I enjoyed watching her on Weekend Sunrise and when she first took over from Mel but it’s just the last year or so I’ve started to dislike her.
Look don’t get me wrong, everyone is entitled to an opinion but Sam seems to have an opinion on everything. It is like that she must put her two cents into everything. You can get your point across without jumping up and down about it and making headlines.
This best sums up how I feel about the discussion which has taken place here over the last few months about Armytage being ‘overly’ opinionated. I’m uncomfortable with the suggestion some have either seemingly implied or made that she shouldn’t be able to express her opinions about things. However, there’s a difference between expressing an opinion and doing that to the point where it comes across as being more about pushing an agenda. It seems like Sam is doing the latter far too often
It’s got to the point where I walk away when Hot Topics comes on because I can’t stand listening to it… and in fact, any interview she does in the 7-7.30am half hour.
But the script writers are no better… some of the intro headlines are just as bad… not fact, more opinion.
Found some gold on Youtube:
This is a clip of classic Sunrise, from August 26 2005.
The clip covers 6.30am-around 7.40am, so not the whole show sadly.
Simon Reeve was reading the news, so presumably Nat was still on maternity leave.
Full credit goes to original uploader. Thought it was worth a share.
How good is the shot at 54 mins, with the full length windows. Wish they didn’t block them up so much, especially higher up where you can’t see people anyway.
I don’t even get what is so appealing about that show or its format for Michael Pell to even cobsider imitating it.
With Today’s increasing dominance, are we expecting any changes to be made at Sunrise?
I think the first thing that needs to be addressed is that the main hosts of the program only spend 3 out of 7 days of the week together, which is less than half of the week. They need to some how get them to both do Mondays to Thursdays or both do Tuesdays to Fridays.
I think a strong line up would be Kochie and Sam hosting Monday to Thursday and Nat, Beretts, Sam Mac and Eddy on news, sport, weather and entertainment respectively. Then Fridays would be Nat and Matt Doran hosting, with Eddy on news and entertainment, and Beretts and Sam Mac on sport and weather respectively. Weekend Sunrise remains unchanged, although Matt Shirvington could always be brought in for sport.
Thoughts?
Probably but such changes shouldn’t be made out of a sense of panic - such a mindset only leads to bad decisions being made and that tends to have a snowball effect.
Whatever happens, Sunrise needs to start considering actions if Today’s resurgence continues. I’d start with getting rid of Sam’s unhinged rants every morning which wouldn’t be out of place at Sky (and if she doesn’t want to, ditch her completely), less tabloid news and sensationalism and more news.
Then again, perhaps the East Coast just hates Seven and everything on it and there’s nothing Seven could do to rein those audiences back in.
Saturday 5 September-
James Tobin was back on location in Sydney for his weather reports this morning,he had been in the studio with the team the previous two weekends.
Good idea. To have Matt Shirvington on sport on WS would also give him more national exposure, given not many people are at home when he’s presenting sport on the Morning News on select days.
Good luck trying to gag her. Remember the self righteous comments on how she had to take a pay cut (as did others did in the network above a pay bracket) so she demanded she worked one less day.
I feel Sam and the graphics are the main issue with the show. The graphics make the show look stale. It’s lost it’s family/every day viewer is appreciated feel. When you look at the video above, it’s almost a completely different show.
They don’t engage or have any form of a community feel unless they can go to some on location venue cause they can make some $$ out of it.
Get rid of Sam and that’ll be a good start.
I would like to see them get the old-fashioned ROS wall back, but I don’t know why Pell seems to like to satisfy his own desires rather than connect with the community. He likes to run the show to suit his own ambitions and all the best talents at Sunrise (Mel, Nelson) seem to be his enemies.
Precisely that’s what a good decision is.
Nat and Kochie to host, Monique Wright to news. Get Natarsha Belling onboard for weekends with Matt Doran and that’s problem solved for you.
That set looks awful.
I’d get back to basics, what made Sunrise good and different? I’d start by removing Sam, if she can’t be bothered showing up, Weight Watchers can be her full time gig. Michael Pell clearly hasn’t innovated in his whole time there, he’s just coasted off the success, and added his mate Sam.
Ros Wall would be good to see back, let the audience set some of the agenda, it’d especially be good to see a campaign of “building back” following Covid with viewer ideas and discussions. Stop going down the tabloid Today Tonight route would be good too.
On Fridays when Kochie is off, Matt Doran could be brought in to host. Despite what many have said here I’m of the opinion that he does well when deputizing for Kochie when the opportunity permits.
That would be most likely what would happen (Matt doing Friday’s) with @Tom_TV7’s line-up he has there, as I can’t see Monique Wright co-hosting with Natalie Barr on Kochie’s day off. Although, Nat and Monique co-hosted Sunrise for the first 1/2 hour of the show back in May 2018 because Sam was running late IIRC?
Edit: Just read back through the thread and it was actually Kochie who was running late and only arrived at 6.15, and then Monique shifted back to news fully (she also read the news whilst co-hosting with Nat in that 45 min span).
