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''Today Tonight'' is an '' on the Nine Network . Like ''A Current Affair'', ''Today Tonight'' is notorious for its sensationalist reporting, and is an example of Tabloid Television where stories rotate around sensationalised community issues i.e. diet fads, miracle cures, welfare cheats etc. HISTORY ''Today Tonight'' evolved from '' Real Life '', which was hosted nationwide by Stan Grant from 1991-1994. At the beginning of 1995 it was renamed to ''Today Tonight'', and changed to the current format of different hosts in some states. At one stage there were three separate versions of Today Tonight for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane with different hosts, but now there is the single edition fronted by Robson, broadcast to all three cities. East Coast Edition The first East Coast Edition was broadcast over summer from Monday, December 4 2000, until January 26 2001. In previous years, Melbourne and Sydney had run the same summer edition, but in the summer of 2000/2001, Brisbane was included for the first time. For the first three weeks - until Friday, December 22 2000 - the programme came from Melbourne with Naomi Robson , then moved to Sydney with Elise Mooney and Melissa Doyle . The three state based editions returned after summer. Then in March 2001, Sydney's ''Today Tonight'' host, Melissa Doyle , went on maternity leave, and the Melbourne version with Robson was broadcast into Sydney for the first time during the ratings period, the first step towards the East Coast Edition. This was supposed to last only 12 weeks, but Melbourne's version rated just as well in Sydney as the local version (despite the fact that for the first few nights they left "Melbourne's Today Tonight" on the screen behind Robson for all Sydney viewers to see). Doyle returned at the end of 2001 to present the summer edition. On December 9 2002, Brisbane's ''Today Tonight'' host, Michelle Reiken took her maternity leave, and they started to get the Melbourne/Sydney version. In 2003, when the ratings period commenced, Brisbane continued with the Melbourne/Sydney edition instead of reverting to a local program, with the promise from Seven that a local edition would return when Reiken returned from maternity leave. This never happened, and in May 2003, the month Reiken was expected to return, Seven Brisbane officially axed its local version of Today Tonight, and the east-coast edition was born. This was because the Melbourne based version performed better in the ratings than the local version of the program. CURRENT STATUS ''Today Tonight'' is in direct competition with the Nine Network 's A Current Affair with Tracy Grimshaw . Despite being produced and made in Melbourne, the program has lower ratings in the city than its competitor made in Sydney. In Sydney, ''Today Tonight'' is the leader, thanks to a strong lead-in of fast-paced gameshow '' Deal Or No Deal '' and '' Seven News '' with Ian Ross. The East Coast edition is presented by Anna Coren during Summer. CRITICISM ''In Barcelona Tonight'' ABC 's '' Media Watch '' programme revealed that Today Tonight had fabricated much of a report about Christopher Skase . Today Tonight sent producer Chris Adams and reporter David "Sluggo" Richardson , along with a camera crew, to pursue Skase who was claiming that his health prevented him from being tried. Richardson alleged that because the Today Tonight crew's videos showed that Skase was in good health, Skase used his connections to the Mallorcan government in order to establish police roadblocks to seize the Today Tonight crew's videotapes. The only support for these claims was a video of Dave Richardson driving past police, exclaiming "Roadblocks! Let's get out of here". Media Watch proved, through examining the broadcast report, that this footage was shot in Barcelona , not on the island of Mallorca . The "police" that Richardson was passing were in fact Spanish urban guards, who use roadblocks to control traffic flow in central Barcelona . Video of the Media Watch report, debunking the Today Tonight claims ''Promoting Australian conman Peter Foster'' In 2005 Australia's most notorious conman Peter Foster received glowing praise for his latest con "SLIMist" from Today Tonight. Foster's involvement and the tragic tale of several innocent people who paid upward of $80,000 for a franchise to sell this useless product as a result of this glowing report by Today Tonight was exposed by A Current Affair on 22nd February 2006. A Current Affair reported that some $4,000,000 has gone missing from "Sante de Suisse" who promoted SLIMist and Foster is now living it up on an island in Fiji. Today Tonight Video promoting Foster's con ''Presenter Naomi Robson faces court in Melbourne'' Extract ABC's Media Watch: It was a story the media couldn't resist: '''"Boy divorces mum"'''. But now it's landed some big media names in a court case of their own. Next week there'll be a further mention in the Melbourne Magistrates Court of criminal charges against more than a dozen journalists, editors and publishers. They include high profile TV personalities such as Naomi Robson (Today Tonight)...... The judge ended with an appeal to the media's better nature to back off, and backed it with a threat she knew they'd understand. But Channel 7’s Today Tonight was undeterred they went ahead with the story. Network Seven racked up the most criminal counts - 21 in all.
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