Source : THE AGE NEWS
You can only imagine the despair in the offices of KIIS and Gold radio network owner ARN on Wednesday.
Just a week after settling the company’s legal battles against controversial broadcaster Kyle Sandilands, whom it sacked in part because advertisers feared the social media blowback that came with appearing on his show, it finds its cleanskin new star is not so clean.
Enter controversial broadcaster Karl Stefanovic, who has signed up to do a weekly show on Gold, only to join Sandilands as another of mainstream media’s largest headaches.
Stefanovic’s recent wing-spreading podcast, in which he sympathetically interviewed and praised the British hard-right extremist Tommy Robinson (the latest in a long line of conservative culture-wars guests), ruffled enough feathers to have it “disappeared” from the usual online platforms – only to be reposted by Pauline Hanson on her YouTube channel.
At this stage, no one is owning up to attempts to bury the Stefanovic-Robinson content.
Neither Stefanovic’s main employer, Nine, nor the large platforms (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Instagram) that hosted it are claiming responsibility, leaving amateur Sherlocks to logically deduce it was Stefanovic’s own team.
One likely explanation is that Stefanovic’s own advertisers, which include a gaggle of little-known supplement and tech businesses, demanded the episode come down.
Meanwhile, Nine, which also owns this masthead, is doing everything it can to avoid being associated with the Stefanovic-Robinson interview, saying it had no involvement in the podcast but was “taking the matter seriously”.
Meanwhile, Hanson has claimed – apparently based on the missing podcast alone – that Nine is trying to sack Stefanovic (or at least muzzle him).
Nine has good reason to care what Stefanovic says outside the television network. He was meant to be the cuddly and charming morning television host who pitches to its middle-aged soccer mums and the legion of Baby Boomers that invite him to join them at the breakfast table during the week.
Its bottom line depends on mainstream companies trusting the network to deliver their advertisements within the friendly setting of a morning show.
Stefanovic, whose contract is not far away from expiring, has his own incentives. His conservative push seems to be his own take on the kind of business model required to maximise an audience.
The anti-woke, right-leaning Joe Rogan mould or even the more conservative Megyn Kelly style appear to be the business models to which team Stefanovic aspires.
Things have evolved to reflect changing audience views, in particular the rise of Hansonian politics of grievance, and the demands of social media. Strong views are required when the audience needs to make the active choice of subscribing to content, rather than passively inhaling it through free-to-air media.
That was always bound to cause tension with Nine. How far the company pushes back to distance itself from Stefanovic’s new identity is now up to the network.
ARN’s experience with Sandilands could be instructive. For years he was paid for populism that included pushing the bounds of his audience’s stomach for crass, sexualised chat on weekday mornings, but ultimately he fell foul of regulators and advertisers. The latter faced a pressure campaign to pull out from the activist group Mad F—ing Witches.
Sandilands’ falling-out with co-host Jackie “O” Henderson was just the last straw that ARN used to terminate his contract, ultimately costing the network a $12 million cash settlement. The company has said that after ridding itself of him, advertisers have returned.
Now Sandilands is going independent and setting up his own online show, which ARN has no control over. It’s arguably a better forum for this controversial media personality, given the friction with ARN’s advertisers.
Twelve years ago, Stefanovic was the bloke who wore the same suit on air for a year to make a feminist-friendly gesture to protest over judgment of his female co-hosts’ outfits – a move that was a cute audience-pleaser for the time.
That was clearly a marketing nod to his mainstream base as they drank morning tea on their couch.
The world has changed and its newly outrage-fuelled culture hasn’t left Stefanovic behind. He’s riding the wave. Just how much friction that’s created between the morning star and Nine remains to be seen.
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