Television

Today Show host announces pregnancy   Author: eNews staff and agencies | Jul 21, 2006, 13:54

A new addition to the desk coming soon!

Touching scenes on the Nine Network's Today Show with Jessica Rowe telling the world she was pregnant and hubbie, Peter Overton from 60 Minutes, joining her on set.

All together now awwwwwwww!

And there's Sunrise's Melissa Doyle, two kids and no dramas on air or gush like Today showed Friday morning.

It’s as if it was news we ALL had to see!

That shows the difference between the two programs: Sunrise remains natural, with a bit of class, the other is still crass and searching for a reason to remain on air and finding ways to exploit its stars to attract viewers is par for the course.

Rowe will be off air when the kid comes next January so Eddie McGuire and his mate, Jeff 'Buckets' Browne, the contracts king, are both very lucky men when they failed to 'bone' Jessica Rowe, as claimed in the now infamous Mark Llewellyn affidavit.

Just imagine Ms Rowe being 'boned' (i.e. sacked) by Eddie and his clowns, only for her to tell the media, tearfully, that she was pregnant with child and leaving it for the media to work out that she was pregnant when sacked.

The headlines write themselves ‘Pregnant ‘Rowe’ ‘boned’ and sacked by Nine etc etc etc

It would have just about caused an early termination in Eddie's public standing.

As it is Rowe has probably made a difficult decision easier: she now has a graceful way out if she wants to leave the Today show with honour next year.

It hasn’t been an easy time for her, she’s been out of her depths at times, while at others she’s been let down by the producers. But she has battled on.

This news will improve her standing with viewers, especially women who have been the harshest critics.

The challenge for Nine now is not to exploit the Rowe pregnancy and make it appear normal: although the Woman’s Day and Women’s Weekly will be clambering into this one for an ‘exclusive’.

Hopefully it won’t be as distasteful as the recent Woman’s Day cover on Rove McManus and his wife, Belinda Emmett, which suggested they were ready to have kids.

Woman’s Day didn’t speak to the couple at all and made up the story through the use of past quotes, which were selectively used.

The Today Show needs all the help it can get in the ratings and thereby lays the danger.

The temptation will be to try and exploit this pregnancy as much as
possible: viewers will find that distasteful if Nine goes over the top.
Nothing Eddie McGuire’s Nine has done so far would give you confidence that this story will not be exploited disgracefully, but we can live in hope.

Seven’s Sunrise is running around 60 per cent more in audience terms each morning (Monday to Friday) from 7 am and sometimes doubles the Early Today audience from 6 am to 7 am.

TV viewers can be rest assured that there will be some exploitation: it is commercial TV and there will be lots of mentions on air and the odd story in ACA.

So what happens next year “Jess, Peter’s baby shock…thrill” (you fill in the adjective). The magazine coverage will become ’nauseating’.

No doubt Seven’s New Idea will way in with its own stories and spoilers (created might be the best way to describe them because you can bet the Seven mob won’t be allowed anywhere near Rowe or Overton).

Me, I reckon it will all end up being a case of immaculate deception:
the baby will happen but we viewers will be deceived into thinking its news.

Calendar 2005 saw around 240,000 births in Australia, strange how practically all of those never rated this sort of mention.

By the way the baby will be either a Capricorn or an Aquarian.

All together now: awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

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