Studio A of Nine’s North Sydney site was buzzing on Friday morning, as a live studio audience piled in to watch the Today Show go to air, in celebration of the show’s 40th birthday.
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Tuesday June 28th was the official anniversary of Australia’s longest running breakfast news program, with cameras first rolling in 1982. Rounding out a big week with a special broadcast, the team looked back on four decades of news events, celebrity guests, OBs from all over the world, and some of the characters they’ve met along the way.
Having filmed the early hours of the show in a different studio, the hosts arrived – to great applause from the audience – at 7:30am, making the move into a room that had been specifically decorated for the 40th birthday celebration.
Kicking off the special broadcast were Brooke Boney and Richard Wilkins, who took a look back at some of the highlights of Today’s entertainment reporting – including some clips of Wilkins from the 90s.
Next on the ticket were Today royalty, Steve Liebmann and Sue Kellaway. With Liebmann in studio and Kellaway beaming in from Florida, the two original hosts of the show reflected on the early days of Today with current hosts Karl Stefanovic and Allison Langdon.
Originally scheduled to launch in February 1982, Today was pushed back a number of times due to a contract dispute involving Kellaway – who joked that the show had “more pilots than QANTAS” made while they waited for the green light.
Eventually, the show hit Australian screens for the first time, with the newsroom covering the launch of the STS-4 space shuttle, what then-treasurer John Howard was doing about taxes, and war in the Middle East.
In the first of several pre-recorded birthday messages to the show, former host Lisa Wilkinson took to the screen.
“They say that life begins at 40, but the truth is for many Australians, life has begun most days for the last 40 years by watching the Today Show,” Wilkinson said. “When I first joined the Today Show, I thought if I can last six months in this chair, I’ll be doing well, so to share that desk every morning for closing on 11 years is an honour I still pinch myself about. I left with so many cherished memories.”
Other pre-recorded messages throughout the morning came from Ben Fordham (who laughed about the world’s hottest pie incident and “three words: long, stabby thing”), Sylvia Jeffreys (who spoke about how difficult the news can be to present, but how it is has been a privilege to bring it to Australians), Delta Goodrem, Barry Gibb, Andy Lee, and Tones and I (with a special appearance from Macklemore).
After a chat with members of the audience (including a woman who was celebrating her 90th birthday, and Peter Kellaway, the brother of Sue Kellaway), Stefanovic, Langdon, and Wilkins sat down on the couch with previous presenters of the show. Steve Liebmann and Sue Kellaway returned, alongside Liz Hayes, Tracy Grimshaw, and Georgie Gardner.
In amongst clips of their younger selves, the group reminisced on the highs and lows of breakfast TV – from the joys of helping out struggling individuals or communities through fundraising efforts, to covering events like the Black Saturday bushfires or 9/11. There was one thing that everybody could agree on, no matter when it was that they had worked on Today: “you’ll never get used to that alarm!”
As the morning wrapped up the audience was given the chance to ask the hosts questions, before a cake was rolled out – that Gardner cut, announcing that she should be the one to brandish a proper “long stabby thing.”
Having thrown over to Today Extra, the cameras were switched off and breakfast was served for all in attendance. As cast and crew moved about the studio taking photos and talking to guests, one sentiment seemed to be repeated time and time again: “we should bring in a studio audience more often!”