Is Brenton Ragless the man to replace Karl Stefanovic in Today hot seat?
His “un-Sydney” everyman style has helped Adelaide newsreader Brenton Ragless leap to the top of the candidates to replace Today host Karl Stefanovic.
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In television terms, he’s big and therefore unmissable.
Standing just under two metres, Channel Nine’s Adelaide newsreader Brenton Ragless would tower over the likes of famed Sydney news anchor Brian Henderson at 170cm, Graham Kennedy 171cm, and Mike Walsh and Ray Martin, about 180cm each — broadcasting legends whose photographs once hung in the corridors at Nine’s Willoughby bunker.
Even Karl Stefanovic, a stocky 177cm, could only eyeball the chest of the 195cm-tall man who replaced him in the chair at Today during the Christmas break prompting executives at Nine to sit up and pay attention.
It is now 41-year-old Ragless’s name that is on lips at Nine.
The little-known boy from Blackwood, South Australia, has hurdled a field of higher profile Sydney newsmen and is currently Nine bosses’ preferred choice to replace Stefanovic at Today — which could be sooner than Nine boss CEO Hugh Marks had originally planned given Stefanovic’s apparent disaffection for the program he hosts and the ugly public disclosure of a private conversation he and younger brother Peter had in an Uber vehicle earlier this year.
After shedding 30kg in recent years, Ragless, the son of an Ash Wednesday firefighter, is match fit.
He is also, according to Nine insiders, “absolutely delightful”.
“Funny”, “warm”, “engaging” and “decent” are words used to describe a man who just three years ago was well out of the running to take one of television’s top jobs — a job expected to one day go to Stefanovic’s longtime understudy Ben Fordham, or possibly newsreader Michael Usher, now at Seven, or Weekend Today presenter Peter Stefanovic or, at a stretch, 60 Minutes’ reporter Liam Bartlett.
In Ragless, executives have spotted someone who is utterly himself — and “not just a Stefanovic clone” as one Nine insider put it last week.
He would also be “excellent value for money” — something Stefanovic hasn’t been for years.
With a background in bus driving, running PR for his dad’s Eden Hills firefighting unit and radio presenting, Ragless has had an unorthodox start in the news game. But because of these roles he has a natural “un-Sydney” everyman style, something Nine executives are drawn to and something Stefanovic, a Queenslander, was once thought to have possessed in spades — or did before he started making $3 million a year.
Having helped Nine Adelaide out with news crosses to fire zones during his days in PR, Ragless was already well-regarded at Nine when he applied for the weatherman job in 2008. After landing the gig he then made the unlikely jump to the news anchor role in 2015, something possibly no Australian TV weatherman has ever done before.
Equipped with a glamour baritone and megawatt smile, he quickly came to the attention of news executives in Sydney as his prime time news ratings in Adelaide lifted.
His stint in the chair at Christmas alongside Today newsreader Sylvia Jeffreys was the only way for executives to know if Ragless, a devoted family man with a young baby who has previously filled in on the Weekend Today couch, might have the talent and stamina for the job.
He quickly proved he did while also keeping the cast and crew in stitches with his Michael Winslow-style repertoire of vocal impressions.
But weighing possibly more in his favour than all of that is the fact he has a profile in South Australia where Nine is traditionally weak in the ratings and chases rival Channel Seven’s tail across the day starting at dawn when South Australians — and their counterparts further west in West Australia — turn on the Sunrise program.
Ragless has previously said that when it comes to his career, he is open to whatever opportunity comes along.
Quoting John Lennon he quipped: “Life is what happens when you’re wondering what to do!”
Originally published as Is Brenton Ragless the man to replace Karl Stefanovic in Today hot seat?
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