ABC News Breakfast wakes up smarter

On the day that TV Tonight visits ABC News Breakfast, big news has just broken. Another soldier has been killed in Afghanistan. Inside the show’s control room the Director has one eye on a camera in Canberra, waiting to cross to the split second that the Defence Force leaders will front a Press Conference.

It’s just 5 minutes to nine and still no sign. In the Southbank studio, hosts Virginia Trioli and Michael Rowland are doing their best to keep the ball in the air. They will go beyond 9am to include the piece. Finally the moment arrives. As the speech to media begins, the next question for Executive Producer Tim Ayliffe is when to pull away from the scene.

Not long afterwards, Ayliffe soon answers a call to Sydney.

“We need to stay on air for the Prime Minister,” he instructs.

With this, the 9:30 Business Today has just been shelved, in order to stay with the story.

“It’s a big story today,” he admits. “Because we’re a News programme we need to be able to make quick decisions, so the Head of ABC news 24, Gaven Morris, I would copy on any decision I have to make. Any decision he doesn’t agree with he can quickly reverse.

“If ever something is borderline and I’m unsure if it’s the right decision, I’ll call him.”

Two and a half years since its launch, ABC News Breakfast has undergone some key changes, including the arrival of ABC News 24 and in May, shifting from ABC2 to the more-profile ABC1.

With a focus on News there is never any shortage of headlines first thing in the morning.

“When there are big announcements they tend to be done in the morning, whether that’s in an interview or a media conference,” he says.

“We do have a huge international focus, but my personal philosophy is that people want to know the latest news. There’s no reason why they should have to wait until the end of the day to get their wrap-up of all the day’s news.”

Six months ago the show moved under the umbrella of ABC News 24 where it had been simulcast around the country. That means viewers in Perth see it live from 4am, or if they prefer, delayed on ABC1 from 6am. The move from ABC2 has seen the show double in numbers.

Audience Reach (viewers who watch 5 minutes or more) is now 150,000 per day, with 426,000 unique viewers per week. While the average audience across its 3 hours is 31,000 it peaks at around 47,000 viewers at 7:30am. It also airs on the Australia Network to countries in South East Asia, but those numbers are much harder to determine.

“People have followed us from ABC2 and there are people who have discovered us (on ABC1). We get a lot of emails and texts throughout the show, and a lot of them over the last few weeks have suggested to me that we’ve got a lot of new viewers,” says Ayliffe.

“I feel like saying ‘Great but we’ve been on for two and a half years.’ But there are a lot of ABC viewers who watch ABC1.”

Hosts Virginia Trioli and Michael Rowland have also noticed a shift in audiences, particularly evident through an increase in Twitter responses and emails.

Says Rowland: “We have a very active engagement with viewers throughout the morning. People over the last few weeks who have comes across and said for whatever reason they’re stuck in the old single channel system or are in hotel rooms are now very, very happy it’s there.”

Trioli adds, “It’s a broader, changing audience. It’s too early to say what the audience is. But that’s the difference that we’ve picked up.”

Twitter is now an integral part of the show, not merely for engaging with viewers, but to monitor breaking news.

“Twitter is not just a place to gossip,” says Ayliffe. “It’s actually a news feed and it’s faster than the newswires like Reuters. All the producers and presenters are on Tweet Deck, constantly monitoring the feeds.

“We still treat them in the same way that we do newswires, always double-sourcing and following the ABC’s editorial policy. And double-sourcing means two reliable sources, not two retweets.”

While Sunrise and Today may hog all the attention, ABC New Breakfast prides itself on offering a serious alternative.

“I think that Seven and Nine have a very strong focus on news and entertainment, which they concede themselves,” says Trioli.

“When I first went to the Logies I was quite surprised to see Sunrise was nominated in Light Entertainment. Now there is no way that News Breakfast is ever going to end up in the Light Entertainment category anywhere. We do have a great intelligence on this program. We are able to draw down on the resources of some of the finest correspondents around the world and they work for the ABC.”

Rowland points out that political interviews deliver statements on a daily basis that resonate throughout the wider media.

“That’s the basis of any good breakfast news program -to set the agenda. All newsmakers generally say something that gets picked up by Midday news or News 24 for further analysis during the day and by 7:00 o’clock or 7:30 there are packages Chris Uhlmann will do from Canberra,” he notes.

But there is occasional room for more offbeat news too.

“Michael and I have a weakness for the stupidity of life so if anything really dumb is going out there, like planking, I’m afraid we’ll want to chat about it for just a minute or two. Then we’ll move on,” says Trioli.

Unlike their commercial rivals there is little room to breathe. Two minute station promos occur shortly before the top of the hour, but otherwise Trioli and Rowland are effectively paddling madly underwater whilst making the presentation as smooth as possible.

“It’s a very intense show,” Trioli remarks. “There are little breaks where we’re kind of working for each other, so if Michael is doing an interview that might go to five minutes then I can step off the couch and go and have a sip a coffee or something.

“It’s actually really similar to a radio program when there is no one but you. I mean, you’ve got your guest but there is never a moment you can actually switch off.”

Rowland observes, “Theoretically we’re on air from six to nine but often it goes way beyond that and this morning was pretty dramatic. There is usually a press conference or something that we are often ad libbing around. It’s all part of News 24 so it’s just another day at the office, really.”

“In radio in particular you learn to just keep talking, and talking in complete sentences and to make sure they’re grammatical. And to make sure they have a point to them and they end. What’s lovely is that we can just switch it between us,” says Trioli.

As part of ABC’s wider automated production system, the show also operates without any camera operators. Instead there are pre-determined solo, double and triple shots that are managed remotely by the control room.

The next challenge for the show will be to boost the number of outside broadcasts, without compromising the show’s national focus.

“We want to get out and about a bit more, it’s something that we’ve done before and we do have the resources to be able to do that,” says Ayliffe.

“Rather than having reporters out with link trucks as we always do on big stories and have guests to talk to, I’d like to have Michael or Virginia on the spot, so that’s something we’ll be working towards.

“I don’t want to be known as the Melbourne breakfast show. We’re the ABC’s national breakfast show.”

ABC News Breakfast airs 6am weekdays on ABC1 and is simulcast on ABC News 24.