Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to a Mamma Mia podcast. Outlouders, it's Mia Friedman here, dropping into your ears with Holly Wainwright, beaming in live from the regions where she lives. And we're here for a special emergency meeting because you may have woken up this morning and seen that Karl Stefanovic has lost his job.
the host of the Today Show for 20 years, who is familiar to, I'd say, most Australians. He is part of our cultural furniture. He will no longer be sitting in that breakfast chair because of an interview that he did with a very controversial figure called Tommy Robinson that has blown everything up. So who is Tommy Robinson? Was this Carl's plan all along? Did Channel 9 make the right move?
Are there any other questions? Joining me to unpack it, of course, is Holly. Hello. Who is also from England. Originally. Originally.
Chapter 2: Why was Karl Stefanovic sacked from Nine?
She's our correspondent on the ground, even though where she lives has nothing to do with what we're about to talk about. Except that she's there. And I'm not. A lot is going on. We're going to unpack it for you today. We have a bit of new intel. We have a few confirmations. And we have some insight from Holly about what really detonated a bomb that has been ticking for quite some time. So...
In short, a Today Show host walked into a podcast studio with one of Britain's most notorious far-right activists this week. And by the day after that interview was published, he has lost his job. That's roughly where we are today with Kyle Stefanovic.
Channel 9 have confirmed that after two decades hosting the Today Show and being a reporter on 60 Minutes and doing lots of other things, he will be leaving the network. They made the decision on Wednesday evening. This is according to the Sydney Morning Herald, which is part of the Nine media company.
After they spent yesterday basically locked in crisis talks after this interview with Tommy Robinson, who is a very famous, very, very far right British activist that Holly's going to explain to us, a bit of context for him, after that was published on his YouTube channels and on his independent podcast channels and then taken down before appearing in full on on all of Pauline Hanson's channels.
And we'll get back to that in a moment. A couple of other things you might need to know. I just want to take you through the timeline briefly before we talk to Holly and understand. Listen to me, throw to Holly as if I'm a live CNN reporter in a war zone. We're on the desk. Before I throw to Holly and she talks about some other things. So here is the basic things you need to know.
He's been with Nine for more than 20 years, as we said. I have worked with Kyle extensively when I was on the Today Show and also when I was at Channel Nine in an executive role for about a year.
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Chapter 3: Who is Tommy Robinson and why is he controversial?
He's currently on a 12-month contract extension. So he did sort of was retired from the podcast after his marriage to his wife of many years and mother of his children broke up. He then started a new relationship, had another baby, got married and that did not play well with the Today Show heartland. So he was sidelined from that job for a while.
The ratings plummeted and they brought him back a little while ago, a year or two ago, sitting him next to Sarah Arbo, who sits next to him on the Today Show couch. It's compromising for her as well because everybody now who associates with Carl by association is connected to Tommy Robinson and all these other figures. So... He's currently on a 12-month contract extension.
He's been on a very lucrative contract. He's a very big star at Channel 9. His current salary for hosting the Today Show is more than $2 million a year. This has been trimmed by over half a million dollars because it was $3 million a year.
And if you recall, part of the reason that Lisa Wilkinson left the Today Show to go to Channel 10 all those years ago is because she was not granted pay parity with Carl Stefano So in exchange for that pay cut, Nine said that Carl could launch an editorially independent podcast, which he did. He launched The Carl Stefanovic Show in January and it's aired initially twice a week.
It is now five shows a week, which is a lot. The kind of guests he has interviewed on his show, he's been nicknamed Joe Bogan after modelling himself on the, you know, very successful American podcaster Joe Rogan who interviews controversial figures and appeals to the far right.
He has, you know, interviewed Barnaby Joyce, Pauline Hanson, some more sort of controversial figures, vaccine deniers he likes. It's a real playbook, which I'm going to ask Holly. I've been speaking for half an hour now, so Holly... Tell us about this, the strategy of the Joe Rogan, Karl Stefanovic podcast, what he's been trying to do.
I would say we've been seeing it evolve in real time because when it launched, his first guest was Pauline Hanson, right? And given where Pauline Hanson is in the national conversation at the moment, that's actually a very defendable, very defendable first guest. right? Like she is, her popularity is absolutely on the rise. She is becoming more and more relevant every minute.
And then I think he immediately interviewed Albanese. So it sort of looked at first, like he was setting himself up as like all the power players come to me. Yeah. But what has clearly, and that's interesting in itself, but what has happened clearly over those short months really since he launched is it's become very clear that actually he's setting out a position.
This isn't, I'm just asking questions. He's having a lot of very specific people on. Barnaby Joyce is now a recurrent character on his show. He obviously has had some, as you say, some controversial people like Pete Evans, which when I listened to that episode, Carl opened it by a
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Chapter 4: What led to the decision by Channel 9 regarding Karl?
But Tommy Robinson is further to the right than Reform. So Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, won't have anything to do with Tommy Robinson. He is beyond the pale. So Just for a little bit of context on who he is, his real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He's been famous in the UK for well over a decade. He started a party there, a very far-right party called the English Defence League.
And their MO, they were born out of a football hooligan movement. And before that, he was in the British National Party, which is an actual neo-fascist organisation and proudly so, right? He started the English Defence League and he left that in 2013 among lots of legal strife. But now he is what you would call an influencer. He would call himself a citizen journalist.
Yeah, I watched this whole episode, by the way, because I wanted to know what I was talking about and I didn't know who Tommy Robinson is. So I watched it and we'll get to that in a minute. But, yeah, he comes across in that episode, which was an absolute just garbled, long ramble by Tommy Robinson. He comes across as like... A likable larrikin.
Yeah, that's not who he is, right?
I couldn't get a handle on who he was from watching that.
A little bit of context. So the reason that he has a long rap sheet, including assaulting an off-duty police officer, libeling and harassing a teenager who is involved in one of the videos that he shares widely. He's been done for contempt. He's been jailed. He's fled the country. He's come back. He is now a key influencer in politics.
the far right protests that you've probably seen all over the news. So the MO of Robinson and his pals is that, say, a crime occurs in Britain and the person who commits the crime is a non-white person. The perpetrator is non-white or certainly appears to be in the video footage that is widely shared.
Robinson and his supporters will then incite people to gather, mobilize social media, name places to gather and protest, force clashes with police. This is why the police and the establishment in Britain can't bear him because most recently this happened in Belfast. There was a horrific crime in Belfast. You might have seen the riots afterwards.
Robinson and his pals incite violence there, houses are set on fire, rolling battles in the road. Like it's that, right? He comes across like...
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Chapter 5: How has Karl's podcast strategy evolved over time?
The sources that I've been speaking to has said that something's changed with financial backing because he's walking away for a million dollars, right, with Channel 9. Why would he do that? He knew what was likely to happen with Tommy Robinson. He was pushing, pushing, pushing. He pushed it over the line. And that's a big risk to take. He's got a mortgage to pay.
He's got, you know, a family to support. So the only reason he wouldn't be worried about that is if he's got financial backing. Was he going to the UK to secure that financial backing? Has it come from here? Is it maybe Gina Reinhart? Could it be Holly Valance? She's just got a divorce from a billionaire and has a big settlement. It's unclear.
But, you know, Kyle has a lot of very important, very, very wealthy friends who are similarly aligned to that political position. So he knew exactly what he was doing.
The reason Nine had to cut him loose was firstly to protect the Today Show brand, but secondly, and this is important, Mad Fucking Witches are an activist group who went after Kyle Sandilands, who went after Alan Jones, and were pretty successful in petitioning advertisers to stop spending money on those shows and with... with the companies that employed those men because of what they said.
And ARN, this is the other part of the puzzle, so Nine had to protect not just the Today Show but the whole network and their relationship with their advertisers. ARN, who just settled with Kyle Sandilands, He has a show with Eddie Maguire, another Channel 9 personality, called The Long Weekend. It's a weekly show that talks about sport and entertainment and celebrities.
It's had two episodes so far and another one is due tomorrow. I would lay money on the fact that that is not happening or that Karl Stefanovic is definitely not going to be on it. So The Mad Witches, that's obviously going to have to, that's going to fall apart now.
So... Do you think, though, my question about this is because we know, as we alluded to at the beginning of this, that in a way this cancellation of Carl from mainstream media, which is, you know, very much Pauline Hanson is very critical of mainstream media.
It's Trump.
It's the Trump playbook. We know that. 100%. We've handed Carl a present in a way.
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