“I’m Never Doing This Again!” Samantha Armytage’s DISASTROUS Today Show Return Sparks a SHOCKING Ultimatum!
- Samantha Armytage’s comeback to breakfast TV hasn’t gone to plan.
- Her on-screen chemistry with one co-host had social media buzzing – for all the wrong reasons.
- Insiders reveal Sam wants to pick her own co-hosts as there are whispers she feels she was “set up to fail”.
It was supposed to be Samantha Armytage’s triumphant return to breakfast television
Instead, to call Sam’s latest stint co-hosting Today a shambles would be the understatement of the year!
Rather than serving up a ratings feast, Sam’s much-hyped comeback left Today’s dwindling audience with a serious case of morning indigestion, as social media lit up with criticism of her on-screen chemistry with fellow fill-in co-host Mike Willesee Jr.
Now, if word around Channel Nine is to be believed, Sam has woken up and smelt the coffee – and she is determined to make sure she is never left with another awkward breakfast pairing again!
“Sam wants Today to succeed,” one insider tells New Idea. “She genuinely believes viewers can tell when presenters click naturally, and when they don’t.”
Another source is even more blunt, saying, “Sam knows it was a shemozzle. She wants to put viewers first, and has told producers she wants to choose her co-hosts from now on – or she’s out.”
For Sam’s second week on Today, she was paired with Tom Steinfort. And it seems she was over the moon to be steering the ship with him.
In an Instagram Story shared the Sunday before their first Monday show together, Sam gushed about how much she loved Tom.
She called him “a lovely man, a good old Melbourne boy”, and, perhaps most pointedly, “a very good journalist”.
Friends say Sam, 49, is starting to feel like she was set up to fail from the very beginning.
Indeed, in that same Instagram Story, Sam hinted as much.
Imploring her 261,000 followers to please wake up with Today, Sam said, “I know the Commonwealth Games are on, but it’s what we refer to in the sport of television as a ‘dead rubber’.”
In sporting terms, a ‘dead rubber’ is a contest where the overall result has already been decided.
Insiders claim Sam appeared to be suggesting there was no way Today – or she herself – could resurrect the show’s ratings when their Channel Seven rival Sunrise had prime Commonwealth Games coverage.
With a chuckle, Sam added, “So look, feel free to swing by. We’ve got all your Comm Games action and plenty more. I hope to see you this week,” before ending the video.
However, some insiders are wondering if Sam is possibly trying to save face and potentially used the Commonwealth Games as an excuse.
As another industry source points out, “A lot of the recent media coverage claims Sunrise’s astonishing numbers are a ‘halo effect’ of the Commonwealth Games.”
But it’s worth noting Sunrise didn’t lose audience during the Paris Olympics back in 2024, when they were on Nine – and Today was even broadcasting from the Olympics!”
Despite Sam’s brave face, insiders claim that, deep down, the former Sunrise co-host had been hoping to give her old brekkie TV colleagues a run for their money.
Instead, the disappointing ratings and fierce online backlash reportedly left her more than a little red-faced.
“Sam never imagined her big comeback would fizzle out quite so quickly,” adds our insider.