Framed as a sandy disruptor to the breakfast show duopoly currently enjoyed by Today and Sunrise, Ten’s desperate bid to Wake Up with anyone who will have them has failed spectacularly so far, snaring just 52,000 sets of eyeballs in its premiere episode and dropping ever since to the point where its only logical endpoint is to eventually be viewed by no one in the year 2020 in a towering testament to Ten’s stubbornness and inability to put together a remotely watchable TV show. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
But viewers aren’t all their losing. Network Director of Morning Television, Adam Boland, determining that the caffeine-deprived masses were incapable of differentiating between two female co-hosts named Natasha and Natarsha, has relieved 30 year old Natasha Exelby (she’s the brunette one, the other brunette one) of smizing/hosting duties just three weeks into the show’s existence.
Ten justified the decision by saying it was a chemistry thing: “Natasha Exelby has departed its breakfast television program Wake Up. Wake Up will continue to be hosted by Natarsha Belling and James Mathison, with Nuala Hafner presenting local news for every state. Ms Exelby will remain with Network Ten’s News division. There will be no changes at Network Ten’s new morning show, Studio 10.”
Boland, who went on indefinite leave just three days after the show debuted after the sobering realisation that he was pushing a massive piece of shit up a hill, said: “It’s important we get Wake Up right. I have said repeatedly that chemistry is everything at breakfast and, right now, I don’t think the balance is correct. It’s up to producers to fix those things. I rate Natasha, Natarsha and James extremely highly individually, otherwise they wouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
“I also saw genuine spark during show rehearsals, but sometimes, that doesn’t translate on air,” he said. “That is nobody’s fault, except mine. Natasha is a dear friend. She is also genuinely talented and will remain a key part of Ten into the future.”
So long Natasha, we hardly knew ye.
Wake Up airs weekdays from 6:30am on Ten, and is followed by Studio 10 with Ita Buttrose and Joe Hildebrand at 8:30am.
