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Surf’s up on eye-catching Wake Up beach

The backdrop upstaged the hosts on TEN's new breakfast show, but offers morning television a new point of difference.

wkupThe waves were rolling in at Manly on Wake Up as TEN’s new breakfast show hit the airwaves.

Wake Up is the network’s revived attempt in the morning television market after the failure of the Paul Henry-led Breakfast.

The cast of Natarsha Belling, Natasha Exelby and James Mathison have been hand-picked by producer Adam Boland, hired by TEN to make an aggressive pitch.

The “beach house” setting sparkles thanks to its enticing backdrop (thankfully it was a sunny November morning!), as a location-feel but with a studio set. Waiting for the technical requirements to be installed and linked back to Pyrmont has paid off.

The three hosts were seated at a desk (complete with McCafe mugs) for the bulk of the show with one or two segments on a couch. The format is familiar breakfast terrain with chat, news, live crosses, social media and an endless array of “talking points”, the kind of topics that dominate women’s mags: Drinking in front of the kids, too much pressure to look good, Catholicism, are men obsolete?

There were way too many of these at the expense of real news and produced segments.

Nuala Hafner did give me some local news (in Melbourne stories from St. Kilda, Malvern East) but I felt like it was one bulletin repeated and would benefit from more variation. A guest tweeter, Jo Casamento from Fairfax, was seated in the much-publicised McDonald’s outlet.

Adam Boland had indicated the production team would be setting the rundown earlier that morning (rather than the night before), but there was little indication of overnight news. I didn’t feel they were telling me what had happened overnight, but maybe that’s affected by a slow news Sunday here and overseas.

The show is attempting to brand itself as “the new home of Aussie music” kicking off with Eskimo Joe with more guests across the next two weeks. We were spared the obligatory showbiz guru.

Sam Mac was the roving reporter, today behind the beach-house. He even visited some local neighbours, a pair of seniors with their own Wake Up with John and Sandra sign in their living room. Sandra told him she didn’t like his sports chat. Priceless stuff (more from them please?).

There were a few technical hiccups with video clips not at the ready and the odd slip from the hosts, but nothing that can’t be improved.

Of the three hosts, Natarsha Belling is the standout, strategically driving the show as the lead anchor. She is smart, well-spoken, relaxed and likeable.

The show ended (running fractionally overtime) with thankyous to sponsors, Manly Council, Victorian government.

One of the show’s biggest assets is being able to live stream the show on the tenplay app, a great offering for commuters.

Overall, Wake Up is a vast improvement on the Paul Henry experiment -but that wouldn’t be hard. The biggest plus for the show is the eye-catching setting, giving an instant point of difference from the competition. Whether that’s enough to sustain viewers beyond the foreground is still the great unknown.

Meanwhile Today has a refreshed set, with Karl and Lisa back behind a desk (desks are in today) with a huge video wall behind them. It didn’t feel like a complete makeover despite some social media rumours. They even had Steve Jacobs on a Sydney beach.

39 Responses

  1. Love the set beach bqckground is great idea . Love natarsha belling the rest needs major overhaul. . The desk is too small for three hosts. The pre recorded news from nula just plain bad that was terrible .News needs to be live one bulletin for all viewers, and we need to see melbourne. wasnt she suppose to be live from flinders station. Ithought with adam bowland i was xpecting alot more . They had three months of rehersals why do they look like they came together yesterday.its definately a goer needs fine tuning heaps better than today .

  2. As for Studio 10.. I didn’t think it was that great. It definitely has promise but it was too much like an Aussie version of The View complete with the presenters walking on set, the desk and the couch. Even the American TV style audience giveaways! And by having Meshel Laurie guest present on the first show just reminded me how much I miss the ladies (and Colin) of The Circle.

    I’m sure both programmes will improve over the coming weeks. Welcome back to morning TV TEN.. we’ve missed you.

  3. Plenty of criticism on this forum but I thought Wake Up overall was pretty good considering it was its first airing (albeit following a good couple of weeks of ‘as live’ rehearsals).

    Agree with most that Nuala’s local news bulletins need work.. not because of her presentation (which was great) but she looked like she was presenting them from a technicolour phone box. And too obviously pre-recorded. What’s the point of having her in the middle of Melbourne at Federation Square if you can’t tell she’s in Melbourne. And her crosses back to ‘Surf City’ (can we please not continue calling it that) looked silly with her just a talking head on what appeared to be a smallish TV screen on the wall.

    Don’t know about the Talking Points or having guest tweeters but that could’ve been due to today’s tweeter being beaten by the nerves of live TV.

    As for Studio 10.. I didn’t think it…

  4. I had faith, as I genuinely admire all 3 hosts.
    However (even with first-day nerves), I think AB should considering reviewing the following – as they’re up at against 2 massive cash-cows (no pun intended!) and a quiet achiever on ABC1.

    1. Sort out the host breakdown – they all look fake, without any ounce of chemistry;
    2. Tell James he’s in for the long-haul, so pep it up and blink. He looks like he’s straight out of the Cross after a big night.
    3. Whilst ‘Tarsh’ is a seasoned news reader, she’s not their mother – tone down the condensing tone and body language.
    4. Talk about an issue proper. Opining over gossip mag issues is a bore. Eyeballs that watch morning television watch it for a reason. That don’t want to be dumbed down (nb. speak to C Pickering on Project!).
    5. Sort out the ‘news’. That’s a total disaster. Harsh on the eye – ‘mirror mirror’, close-up,…

  5. It was just cringeworthy, I will let it simmer for a couple of weeks and have another look. Hopefully they can get Matherson running on full charge by then.

  6. Wake Up needs to fix the news bulletins with the local news that I got in Qld featured in Today’s normal bulletins. It was also noticable the news segments were prerecorded also.
    They need to tone down the inane chatter as it looked contrived & David you were right in saying they looked crowded on the desk.
    Being a Queenslander I just imagined that the backdrop was the Gold Coast.

    Studio 10 I watched until the introduced Meshel Laurie & I thought I was watching The View with a similar desk close to the audience & the walk onto set.

  7. Excellent write up David (as usual). I trust Adam Boland’s production talents, however I continue to question their choice of location. Sure, it looks great but the novelty will wear off very very quickly. But there’s a bigger issue… getting subjects or talent to that spot will become an increasing nightmare. Manly is not easy to get to in a short amount of time. Anyone doing the breakfast TV rounds will now be forced to travel the Sydney (Bermuda) Triangle of the CBD, Willoughby and now Manly. Nightmare!!!

  8. I’ve always thought Natarsha Belling was made for breakfast tv and she certainly proved herself to be so. She was brilliant. I have no idea why Natasha Exelby feels the need to bung on the ocker accent every chance she gets. It’s absolutely cringe worthy. She was really out of her depth unfortunately – a bizarre casting choice in the first place. The show certainly has potential but I didn’t see anything that was all that different to what else is on offer.

  9. Natrsha belling is the stand here true seasoned professional the other two very lame . The set looks too small. Love the beach views. The delayed inserted news from nula from melbourne is terrible. Nula needs to be in the studio reading the news as for studio 10 i thought it was terrible ,. Tried it hate going back to sunrise and the morning show .just goes to show how good sunrise is . Its streaks ahead of today and wake up .

  10. Richard Freedman ‏@R1CHARDFREEDMAN 5h
    That was weird-Ch10 Wake Up show just tried to book me for tomorrow morning. Don’t think Ch7 + Sunrise would like much.@7Sport @sunriseon7

    Interesting tweet. Thought ch10 would have known better that Richard does the carnival every year for 7.

  11. The Sydney Morning Herald gave the ten line up a real serving …… not the publicity Ten had hoped for ….. so it is not likely it will grow as a result of the not so favourable publicity …….

    Oh dear Ten …. what have you done …. again … ?

  12. As a first outing, it showed real promise.

    But I will be staying with Virginia and Michael at ABC News 24. No cash cows, no humiliating karaoke, no hosts embarrassing themselves – just the good company of Virginia and Michael and Paul, and the latest on what is going on in the world.

  13. @Evan43. Havent watched it this morning cant wake up no pun intended on time but if they were offensive then i think adverstisers would be very concerned and considering TEN needs to make money thats a very bad sign Breakfast with Paul Henry at the helm was offensive and look how that turned out, yes it sounds they are trying to be safe,i kind of laughed when in the promos for this show Natasha Exelby said that no topic is taboo (iam sure David will correct me ont that) i laughed because i thought yeah right, not in this day and age. This show could easily fail over crowed market population cannot sustain it like 3 tv networks.

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