Karl Stefanovic has claimed that he had already planned to leave the Today show months before his contract with Channel Nine was dramatically terminated last week.
Stefanovic spoke candidly about his exit on the recent episode of his independent podcast, The Karl Stefanovic Show, which was reportedly recorded on a yacht owned by Aussie billionaire (and Mariah Carey’s ex) James Packer in France on the same day of his departure. The longtime broadcaster was joined by British journo Piers Morgan— who was famously sacked from Good Morning Britain in 2021 over comments made about Meghan Markle — and revealed the original plans he apparently had with Nine to leave Today.
“I told Nine I was leaving the Today show two or three months ago,” he shared, giving Madison Beer à la ‘I was supposed to be in the video’.
He also said that the network asked him to give them time “to test the waters” on his replacement, adding: “I gave them a huge chunk of time, and I don’t know when they were going to announce who was going to be my replacement. So at the end of the year, I was going to sail off into the sunset.”
Morgan went on to ask if Nine were going to honour the rest of his contract, which was set to expire in December, and Stefanovic said they are “working that out”.
“Would you like it to end amicably?” Morgan asked.
“I’d prefer to,” Stefanovic replied.
“You know, I thought ‘These guys are actually so cool. They’re allowing the interviews to happen, and maybe this is the start of a wave of finally free-to-air going, you know what? This stuff is interesting, and it’s drawing more audience in’. Maybe I was just completely and utterly ignorant.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Stefanovic said that he is feeling “discombobulated” after the whole debacle, but he still thinks it’s important to continue “driving forward with freedom of speech”.
“If you don’t like the way that I do an interview, then don’t watch it. It’s my style, it’s my show,” he remarked.
Today’s ratings plummet
Stefanovic’s termination came after he interviewed British far-right activist Tommy Robinson — whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — on his podcast, which sparked crisis meetings at Nine and was wiped from YouTube within 24 hours of publication.
Nine released a statement on Friday announcing that “while Karl and Nine had previously agreed he would leave Today at the end of this year, [they] have subsequently decided he will leave the network immediately”.
Since then, Today hit a 2026 low of just 230,000 viewers on Tuesday, while News Breakfast on ABC trailed closely behind on 201,000 viewers and Channel 7’s breakfast show Sunrise topped the ratings with 456,000 viewers.
Nine has yet to announce who will replace Stefanovic on Today, but there are plenty of high-profile names in the mix for us to speculate on.
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