Karl Stefanovic and Natalie Barr clash on live radio

The TV rivalry between breakfast shows Sunrise and Today came to a head on Friday night when Karl Stefanovic and Natalie Barr appeared on live radio together.

Ricki-Lee, Tim and Joel from Nova FM drive show staged the warring presenters for a friendly play on words and tensions reached an all-time high.

Despite admitting that the pair got along well outside of work, Barr, 55, exchanged several barbs with her “opposition” Stefanovic, 48, including pretending to forget his name.

“It’s not easy to look at each other and be such fierce competitors,” the Today host noted. “Look at the daggers.”

The Channel Seven star tried to put an end to speculation about a ‘TV war’ and confessed: ‘We’re not actually bothered by each other.’

To which Stefanovic joked, “That’s not true.”

‘Do you hate me? Okay, I hate you more,” Barr replied.

It all ended well, however, when the Today host ended the playful altercation by saying, ‘Well, you’re successful, and I’m not. So there.’

It comes after Stefanovic’s boss spoke out against a “fabricated” newspaper article claiming that the “beleaguered” breakfast show is in crisis due to “plunging” ratings and viewers who supposedly don’t warm to new co-host Sarah Abo.

The Daily Telegraph published a story on Friday that quoted an unnamed TV executive as saying, “Nine bosses are deeply concerned and since MAFS ended there have been daily meetings to figure out what to do with Today… The Karl/Sarah combination is clearly not connecting with viewers.’

But in an extraordinary statement to Daily Mail Australia, Nine’s director of morning television, Steve ‘Burlo’ Burling, called the report a “fabrication” based on an outdated method of measuring TV ratings.

The article in The Telegraph said “all is wrong” behind the scenes of Today as it falls behind Channel Seven’s Sunrise, which has won every week of the ratings year so far in the five-city metro market – although Today is more dominant in the east coast.

Sunrise has an eighteen percent lead with an average metro audience of 213,000 viewers compared to today’s 181,000, according to OzTAM overnight figures.

The story also alleged tensions between the Today show hosts, after newscaster Alex Cullen was demoted to the sports desk while entertainment reporter Brooke Boney stepped up to the news desk.

This reshuffling at the beginning of the year – coinciding with Abo replacing Allison Langdon as co-anchor – is said to have resulted in Cullen expressing his displeasure on-air by “deadpanning” Stefanovic and Abo.

This incident reportedly resulted in Burling holding a “closed-door meeting” with Cullen.

But Burling has hit back at this damning report, telling Daily Mail Australia: ‘The story published today is a total fabrication and a distortion of the old fashioned and antiquated overnight rating system.

“With Today and Today Extra, we are well positioned with the metropolitan and East Coast audiences, and the all-important younger audiences.

“Our team works brilliantly together and the response from our audience to the line-up couldn’t be more positive.”

In an extraordinary move, Burling’s statement was later posted in full on the Today show’s Instagram account, with the comments disabled.

A Channel Seven spokesperson responded to Burlo’s outburst on Friday afternoon with a statement highlighting Sunrise’s position as Australia’s No. 1 breakfast show.

‘The numbers don’t lie. Sunrise has been number one for 19 years and is number one again this year, in the capitals and nationwide,” they said.

Sunrise wins in Sydney, NSW, Victoria, Adelaide, South Australia, Perth, WA, Tasmania and Queensland. It grows well in Melbourne. Today is ahead in Brisbane.’

Meanwhile, sources tell Daily Mail Australia there are “no daily meetings” to discuss the future of the Today show, contrary to The Daily Telegraph’s report.

They also say that Cullen is not dissatisfied with his new role at Today, as sport has always been his ‘passion’.

A new rating system was introduced this year, Virtual Australia (VOZ), which properly integrates watching traditional broadcasting on TVs and streaming audiences on connected devices, giving advertisers, journalists and media agencies a better understanding of how many people are watching. watching television programs.

This contrasts with the old system of audience measurement, which collected figures of people watching live TV at night in the five most populous cities.

The media feud between The Daily Telegraph and Channel Nine is partly caused by News Corporation, the Telegraph’s parent company, being a commercial rival to Nine Entertainment Co. in the newspaper game.

The Telegraph is known for its negative coverage of Nine shows, which then intensified for the television giant merged with Fairfax Media in 2018 to become owner of The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review – attacking News Corp newspapers.