Wake Up Has Just Been Cancelled, Along With Channel Ten’s Early Morning And Late News
"Despite the commitment and enthusiasm of its staff, Wake Up has not resonated with enough viewers to make it a viable program.”
It’s official: in an email sent out to staff this morning, TEN CEO Hamish McClennan has confirmed that Channel Ten will be cutting Wake Up after six months of poor ratings, with the network’s struggling early morning and late news broadcasts also set to cease production this Friday May 23.
While the exact number of redundancies is yet to be confirmed, Mumbrella are reporting that as many as 150 jobs could be cut.
Big hugs to my friends at Wake Up, Early/Morning News and Late News.
— Sarah Harris (@SarahHarris) May 21, 2014
“As you all know the television advertising market has been soft in recent years,” McClennan wrote in the email to staff. “At the same time, our ratings, revenue and earnings have been disappointing. It is a tough period to Ten and we need to take some painful, but necessary measures to restructure the business … Unfortunately it is proposed that Wake Up and the Early Morning and Late News will cease production on Friday, May 23, 2014. Studio 10 is performing well and will continue as a vital part of our daytime schedule, which ranks number one.
“Despite the commitment and enthusiasm of its staff, Wake Up has not resonated with enough viewers to make it a viable program.”
Wake Up has been struggling since it launched last year; it took just 16 days for co-host Natasha Exelby to be cut under the charge of not-having-enough-chemistry-with-James-Mathison, and after suffering from a breakdown in January, the architect of the program, Adam Boland, left she show for health reasons in February.
Reports of the program and staff cuts began circulating yesterday, with one source telling Fairfax that “the staff are in for a world of pain”. According to the same report, it is claimed the network will be retaining their state-based newsreaders for the 5pm bulletins, although the bulletins themselves will be more nationalised. “They’ll keep the state-based presenters to maintain a shop window presentation of being local, but a lot of the content will actually be national,” said the source.
The network is still recovering from the loss of 100 staff during a cost-cutting drive in 2012.