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Chapter 1: Who is Karl Stefanovic and what has been his career trajectory?
Karl Stefanovic wasn't always an anti-woke crusader.
Well, as we all know, I can be a complete tool, right? Yes! Well, yesterday I was worse. I was an ignorant tool.
When I say ignorant, I truly meant... Karl Stefanovic has spent decades as one of the most recognisable faces on Australian television.
Now more than ever, we need to educate ourselves, laugh together and embrace each other's differences and live with tolerance, compassion and most of all, love and respect for everyone. A household name from the largely inoffensive world of breakfast TV.
This country is built on so many pillars, including those who come from far away lands with not much more than hope and a drive for a better life for their family. They have made this a better place. They helped make modern Australia.
Now, that multi-million dollar career at Nine appears to be over, after Stefan Novik published an interview with Tommy Robertson, a British far-right activist with a long criminal history, who has built a large following based on hate-driven rhetoric towards Muslims, immigrants, the changing face of Britain, and on the claim he's being silenced by the establishment.
Keir Starmer's out.
Tommy Robinson's on the show tonight. And Tommy, how are you feeling? I'm good. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Keir Starmer is a wanker.
But the fallout from the podcast, including the split with Nine, may have worked in Stefanovic's favour as he tries to forge a new career in outrage podcasting. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to 7am. Today, Crikey's media reporter, Danielle Saeed, on Karl Stefanovic, the interview that ended his time at nine and the audience he may have been chasing all along. It's Friday, June 26th.
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Chapter 2: What caused Karl Stefanovic's split with Channel Nine?
People that have been involved in that party have sort of distanced themselves from him. Sir Nigel Farage, obviously the leader of Reform, was the leader of UKIP. He has said he would not be welcome in Reform. And Reform is, for our Australian listeners, sort of the UK equivalent of One Nation, effectively.
This is a man who, where the Australian body politic, as we'll get into, has welcomed into its arms. The UK conservative body politic has said, this is too much for us.
I never wanted Tommy Robinson to join UKIP. I don't want him to join Reform UK, and he won't be.
And I think there's another interesting point there about the use of the pseudonym. There's a class element to that. This is fundamentally not a working-class man, and he wants to style himself as a working-class man because it's politically convenient. So what does he do? He takes away the double barrel of Yaxley Lennon, and he styles himself as Tommy Robinson. So there's an element of that too.
There's a reason he didn't use a big, long-winded double-barrel pseudonym. He used something that sounded, in his mind, more working-class. Robertson also presents himself as someone who's been punished for telling the truth. Jailed, censored, silenced by the establishment. That's obviously central to what he would think his appeal is.
This idea that he's a free speech martyr, the media won't let you hear. But what's the reality of his legal history? This is a man who has a long, long history with the law. You know, assault convictions, fake passports, mortgage fraud, contempt of court. He's been convicted over, and I think this is the most troubling part for someone who styles himself as a journalist.
He has convictions for stalking and harassing journalists. So you want to know this, any journalist, I will find you.
Just act respectfully. You want to question me, question me. Do not give locations, photograph, do anything in front of my family.
Right? There was a BBC documentary about him which he sort of discusses as sort of silencing him. He produced a documentary called Silenced with InfoWars, Alex Jones. Again, like sort of American conspiracy theorist.
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Chapter 3: Who is Tommy Robinson and why is he a controversial figure?
Okay, so Carl does the interview, teased the interview for his podcast. It goes out into the socials. It then is published, but less than 12 hours later, it disappears from social media and from podcast platforms. What happened? So this is the million-dollar question, or the $2 million question. Yeah, $2.3 million question. It really is, at the moment, pretty unclear.
The only outlet that has claimed to have some sort of detail about this is The Australian, who Steve Jackson, their media diarist, has published his piece. And in it, he says that Stefanovic brought down the podcast himself. That's interesting. Like, if it is true that he has simply realised the gravity of it after the fact, then I don't think I'm allowed to swear on this, but he's a moron.
Like, he must be a moron. Very slow on the uptake. If it is not immediately apparent to you that Tommy Robinson is a far-right extremist and it is problematic for the fourth biggest Australian on the Spotify charts, the biggest man in television, the highest highly paid man in television, if it's not apparent to you that there's a problem with that, you're an idiot.
I think we need to have a really serious conversation about the kinds of talent that we platform in this country as the face of breakfast television. I think there should be some serious reflection at Nine. But Nine are in this bind, right? There's this really comical game of professional chicken. Nine understand how problematic this is.
Their journalists are really upset about the impact it has on their reputations. But the minute you let Carl go, I am almost certain There will be an episode of the Carl Stefanovic show along the lines of why I was cancelled by the mainstream media. Here's my tell-all about how and why I left Nine. And I suspect Nine would have wanted to avoid that for as long as possible.
Now, it's worth noting that Carl took a half million dollar pay cut to continue with Nine. The economics of paying television talent these enormous salaries, that doesn't work anymore, not in Australia. That gravy train across the industry, not just at Nine, is over. That's primarily, I think, the reason why Carl wanted to exit, is to make up that difference elsewhere.
Coming up, does this play right into the hands of Carl and his far-right bros? Danny, I think for a lot of people, this transformation from brekkie TV host to Australia's Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson has come as a shock. But you say this has been coming for a while now. What signs did you spot in this trajectory? The part of which it became really clear to me that Carl's media diet was changing.
And he said this. was an interview he gave right before he interviewed the Prime Minister. And he had two right-wing figures. He had Sam Bamford from Two Worlds Collide, who's an ex-soldier, and he had Chris Cadillaris. He styles himself as Big Chucky, who's an online sort of right-wing influencer as well. And they call for mass deportations during this episode.
We're not actually racist. We don't actually hate people for their colour. We don't hate people for X, Y, Z. We just want this country to remain as what we grew up in. And it's just that simple. I think it's gone. I don't know. I mean, I mourn for the way I grew up. So do I, man. I don't know how we get it back. How do we get it back? Deportations? Deport, deport, deport, deport.
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Chapter 4: What was the content and reception of the interview with Tommy Robinson?
I'm really interested in this. I think it's a fascinating question. I suspect not. I don't think it changes viewer behaviour. I'm going to be optimistic here. I may well be wrong. There may be egg on my face here, as there so often is when you're optimistic about the statement. The Australian body politic.
But I think reasonable people look at what has happened here and go, that was a serious mistake. Nine have taken fairly swift action. And so for the reasonable Australian who sees Tommy Robinson as a far-right provocateur that he is, I suspect Nine come out of this... okay having dealt relatively swiftly, noting that, you know, this has been a six-month saga.
This has been a long saga for the Nine Network, for sure. And, Darnie, what do you think all this says about the current media landscape? Because even five years ago, perhaps even two years ago, the idea of a top pay presenter of a prestige network like Nine putting that gig in jeopardy to pursue a podcast career like this would have been unthinkable.
Not that there's anything wrong with podcasting, by the way. I just want to... Just to make that clear. And long may the 7am podcast live. I think that like we joke, but I think that is at the core of where we're at here is for commercial networks, the gravy train is starting to end.
For consumers, we know that, and the most recent version of the Digital News Report came out recently by the University of Canberra, we know that individuals, you and me punters, trust personalities much more these days than they do institutions. And they're choosing and picking the personalities that they trust. And so there is money to be made.
There is media success to be had in going independent. We've seen this for a little while. Carl is by no means the first big Australian media personality to go independent. Joe Aston left the Financial Review and started his own publication. It appears to be going very well for him. And everyone has their own podcast now, myself included, that is separate to their day jobs.
And increasingly, companies are saying yes to that and approving that because they recognize that they can have their cake and eat it too. They can have this effectively free labor building the profile of someone who is also on the network. So I think there's value and economic opportunity there, commercial opportunity there.
The problem with that is that there is, if you take that to its logical end and you say everyone should be by themselves and everyone should have a sub stack and everyone should have a podcast, we end up in like the cable or streaming market that we're in now where if you want to consume a selection of things that you'd like, you're paying a million different subscriptions, you're paying a million different fees and it's not economical for the consumer.
So there is a risk that that market gets saturated very, very quickly. And then we come full circle and we go back to aggregated models and we have things like newsrooms and commercial television networks where we watch, we share content together. So there is opportunity, but I imagine it will cap itself pretty quickly and we'll see that cap pretty quickly.
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