Nine News, a ‘pinch yourself’ moment.

Nine News duo Alicia Loxley and Tom Steinfort have wrapped their first week together behind the Melbourne desk, enjoying a win across 5 of their 6 nights on air.

Seven News led on Sunday night with an 8,000 metro lead. By Thursday night the gap was 74,000 in Nine’s favour.

At a media event on Friday Alicia Loxley acknowledged the honour of being asked to co-anchor the weeknight bulletin.

“To travel to the newsroom we walk down a set of stairs and there are three huge portraits of Sir Eric Pearce, Brian Naylor and of course the wonderful Peter Hitchener. So you are reminded several times a day of the history in this great city of Melbourne at GTV. It really is a ‘pinch yourself’ moment to now be in that role. The importance of that is certainly not lost on Tom or I,” she said.

Steinfort said he thought the first offer him for the role he thought was a prank.

“We started pretty much at the same time in Bendigo Street. (From) someone I used to sit next to at a desk with back then, we now share a desk. So we’ve come full circle,” he said.

“The ability for us to be able to go out on the road, Live at six, bringing you stories from out and about is a way to rreally make our bulletin more dynamic and take news into the future,” said Loxley.

Steinfort added, “Alicia is off to the Olympics, we’ve got a Presidential election, we’ve got two wars going on at the moment, so it’s a huge news year and of course Richmond’s huge unexpected premiership this year will be the biggest story of all.”

No doubt Seven will be looking to the end of the Australian Open to see how News numbers settle.

Corrected.