As Today host Ally Langdon emerged last week as a favourite in the battle to host Channel Nine’s top-rating A Current Affair, no-one, least of all the remaining contenders – network sweetheart Sylvia Jeffreys, Ten’s Carrie Bickmore, and wildcard Amelia Adams – had any idea the race to the end would become so cutthroat!
WATCH: Tracy Grimshaw announces she’s leaving A Current Affair
“It’s been a bit like a real-life Hunger Games over at Nine these past couple of months!” a well-placed insider reveals to New Idea.
“In fact, it took months from when Tracy [Grimshaw] first made the announcement that she’d be stepping away from ACA after 17 years to finally find her replacement.”
At the time of going to print, Nine had yet to announce just who had landed the most coveted role on Australian TV, but many had their money on Ally to take out the top gong.
“There were none of the usual leaks, only wild and crazy speculation!” says the insider.
New Idea has learned senior management could not agree unanimously on who should take over the reins – and instead came up with the plan of running an ACA boot camp!
“They knew Tracy’s shoes were almost too big to fill, so they took the unprecedented step and put some of the candidates through a gruelling audition process,” explains the insider.
“This is TV’s holy grail, the top-tier plum job, and these are some of the most experienced operators – so it beggars belief they had to go through a process like no other, as though they had training wheels on!”
What’s been cheekily dubbed among industry pundits as ‘The Great Race to Replace Trace’, behind the scenes the waiting game reportedly took its toll on everyone involved, with rumours of tantrums and plenty of waterworks as the nervous candidates awaited their fate.
Meanwhile over at Today, while Ally was conspicuously absent last week from her hosting duties, producers were busy auditioning a possible new co-anchor for their current front man Karl Stefanovic.
“Karl has made no secret that if Ally does go over to ACA, he wants the talented and well-respected Amelia Adams, who just moved back from the US bureau, to replace her,” the insider adds. “They have a really good connection.
“And we all know Karl generally gets what he wants!”
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