The Today show smashes Sunrise in  extraordinary ratings comeback

The Today show has soared ahead of Sunrise in the breakfast TV ratings in a spectacular turnaround after dropping to third place earlier this week.

Today, hosted by Allison Langdon and Karl Stefanovic, had dipped below 200,000 metro viewers on Tuesday, falling behind Seven’s Sunrise and ABC News Breakfast.

But it turns out this was just a bump in the road because the Nine program blitzed the competition on Wednesday with a five-city audience of 236,000.

Winning: The Today show, hosted by Ally Langdon (right) and Karl Stefanovic (left), has soared ahead of Sunrise in the breakfast TV ratings after dropping to third place earlier this week

It beat Sunrise, which had 228,000 metro viewers, and ABC News Breakfast, which had a combined audience of 205,000 across ABC and ABC News.

Today also secured a strong regional audience of 109,000, bringing its total national figure to 346,000, and helping Nine win the day in all key demos and total people.

These numbers will no doubt please Nine executives, who recently offered Langdon and Stefanovic one-year contract extensions worth $1.8million each.

Anomaly: Today had dipped below 200,000 metro viewers on Tuesday, falling behind Seven’s Sunrise – hosted by Natalie Barr (left) and David ‘Kochie’ Koch (right) – and ABC News Breakfast

Today’s resurgence comes after it underperformed on Tuesday, drawing just 193,000 viewers in the five-city metro market.

Sunrise, hosted by Natalie Barr and David ‘Kochie’ Koch, won easily with 244,000 metro viewers, followed by ABC News Breakfast, which drew an impressive 201,000.

But it seems this dip was just an anomaly and Today is still on an upwards trend.

Still on track: However, it turns out this was just a bump in the road because the Nine program blitzed the competition on Wednesday with a five-city audience of 236,000

It comes after Stefanovic’s highly publicised pay dispute with former co-host Lisa Wilkinson, who was sacked from the show – and Channel Nine – in 2017.

The 61-year-old veteran TV host left the network after trying and failing to achieve pay parity with Stefanovic.

She has revisited the saga in her new autobiography, It Wasn’t Meant to Be Like This, in which she alleges Stefanovic convinced her to approach the network for more money, explaining that if they weren’t given pay parity, they’d both quit.

Nailing it: Today also secured a strong regional audience of 109,000, bringing its total national figure to 346,000, and helping Nine win the day in all key demos and total people 

She later discovered Stefanovic had signed a $2million deal with Nine amid rumours he was planning to move across to Channel Seven.

‘He had played both networks off against each other brilliantly and in full public view. There was no doubt about it: Karl certainly knew the art of the deal,’ she wrote in a book excerpt published by The Sunday Telegraph.

According to Woman’s Day, however, Stefanovic has learnt from his past mistakes and now realises ‘his secret weapon to survival on the show is Ally’. 

Bad blood: It comes after Stefanovic’s highly publicised pay dispute with former co-host Lisa Wilkinson (right), who was sacked from the show – and Nine – in 2017. Wilkinson is revisiting the saga in her autobiography, It Wasn’t Meant to Be Like This, which is released next week