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Changes coming to Wake Up

Exclusive: Wake Up is planning changes to its News and Weather content.

2014-03-23_2327EXCLUSIVE: Wake Up News presenter Nuala Hafner will be leaving her Melbourne news desk to join Natarsha Belling and James Mathison in Manly, TV Tonight can reveal.

The change in coming weeks is part of producer Steve Wood’s plans for TEN’s breakfast show.

The shift will end the remote bulletins at Federation Square and help boost her rapport with the show’s Sydney presenters. The widely-held view is that having Hafner on set outweighs any benefit from being seen to have a Melbourne presence.

It will be the second key change to Wake Up news after earlier abandoning local news reports, established by former producer Adam Boland.

Wood also plans to introduce a regular weather presenter to the team. That’s despite TEN recently losing skilled meteorologist Magdalena Roze, who was part of the Paul Henry-led Breakfast team.

Wake Up will however, broadcast from Melbourne during the Logies week, likely to be from Federation Square.

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No date has been earmarked for the changes, with Wood keen to introduce them at the same time. In the ratings race, Wake Up is still struggling against three other shows, last week hovering between 35,000-50,000 people.

TV Tonight recently visited Wake Up and got an insight into how the show transforms Queenscliff Surf Life Saving Club. Everything in the makeshift studio is portable, from desk, sets and lights, with the exception of the lighting grid.

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Once Friday morning’s show has been completed, everything is packed away for the weekend, allowing the space to become communal use once more, until Sunday night when it is all transformed once more. The entire model is compact and economic in order to make the most of its eye-catching backdrop.

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35 Responses

  1. We don’t need anymore Breakfast shows!!! I love Studio 10 and they should keep it because its great to have our own version of “The View” and its better than the Morning Show. The Morning Show just has ads, ads and more ads!!! Wake Up! though should be cancelled and replaced with something else. How about Animation Fixation? It competes with ABC on Kids Entertainment and kids would love to watch The Simpsons or Futurama while they are having breaky and getting ready for school. Tarsh should go back to new reading and Matho should be Charlie Pickering’s replacement on The Project.

  2. this move is long overdue .the sooner it happens the better .nula looks ridiculous in that melb room .and enough with the local news as well silly idea. and getting a weather person is also needed . i am still not convinced with james matheson i agree he does come across as a smarty pants and his cameo apperance on a sydney radio station talk back station was cring worthy when he spoke to that right wing shock jock ben fordham.i still think wake up could do with kerry ann kenerley KAK next to nartasha .love nartasha. its a good show but not there yet .still needs work

  3. I like Wake Up, I prefer it to the other two (Sunrise and Today). Has anyone ever sat through Today from 5.30am to 8.00am? It’s the same ‘news’ stories over and over and over and over…(you get the idea). I figured that I only had to watch a 30 minute segment at 5.30am and I’d know what they’re talking about for the rest of the show. Sunrise is not that much different, same stories throughout the whole show with the only difference being they start at 6am. At least Wake Up has different stories the two hours that they are on air. I like Natarsha Belling and James Matheson, not so much liking the other presenters on the other shows. I don’t undestand why people don’t like the show other than it’s on Ten!

  4. Copying Sunrise and Today with a smaller budget was never going to be a success. ABC24 is (moderately) succesfull because it offers a real alternative.

    Studio 10 is a real alternative to Mornings and has been well received and is doing better than Wake Up. Why didn’t they make Wake Up different?

  5. Thank you so much for this article and the pics. David.

    You have certainly shown me why the acoustics for ‘Wake Up’ mostly sounding like the’re in an underground car park, and just not good enough for a professional broadcaster.

    Surely after outlaying so much for the special feeder cable that even delayed the beginning of ‘Wake Up’, they could have used the extra time to install acoustic paneling, and before they installed the studio lighting grid etc.
    I understand as per your article that the whole set is indeed portable, but it appears in the pics that there should have been ample room to install such paneling between the roof bearers at least, with little effect on the weekend use of the area.
    Does this also explain why we may never see a weekend version of ‘Wake Up’ from this set, or even possibly with a later start and and then call it ‘The Sleep In’.

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