How Today can recover from Karl Stefanovic’s Uber-gate scandal
NINE’S bosses are taking calculated steps to claw the Today show back from Peter and Karl Stefanovic’s embarrassing Uber-gate scandal — but experts warn the drama can’t go on.
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THE Today show is in damage control — again — in the wake of Karl Stefanovic’s embarrassing Uber-gate scandal.
Stefanovic, 43, and his co-host Georgie Gardner, 46, — the woman he slagged off within earshot of an Uber driver while on a loud speaker phone call to his brother, Peter Stefanovic — were today kept separate during the breakfast TV show.
Today co-host Georgie Gardner was sent out to cover the fires by Nine bosses to “bide some time” before she and Stefanovic are reunited in the studio, crisis management experts speculated today.
Stefanovic remained in Nine’s Sydney studios, with newsreader Deborah Knight filling Gardner’s chair, while Gardner reported live from the fires in Tathra, on the NSW south coast.
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Peter Stefanovic and his wife, Today newsreader Sylvia Jeffreys, were also out at the fires in NSW and Victoria. Jeffreys, of course, had been brought into the saga as she was in Uber when her husband Peter Stefanovic had made the scandalous call to Karl.
Yesterday, Gardner took a thinly veiled swipe at Karl on Today, calling him “pathetic”.
But media analyst Steve Allen said Stefanovic and Gardner needed to reunite properly ... and soon.
“I think they’ve got to do it this week. It will become a bit too obvious (the separation) if this just goes on until Friday,” Mr Allen told News Corp Australia today.
“They’re letting the chemistry reset itself. No doubt they will see each other around the network and suddenly, they’ll appear together on set again.”
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REVEALED: What Karl and Peter said in the Uber ride
Mr Allen said the rationale from Nine’s bosses was: “Let’s not have any awkward moments for the next few days. Let it run its course. They’re trying to buy breathing space, I think”. “Some of what the brothers discussed was certainly incendiary, regardless of how they’ve apologised since,” Mr Allen said.
“So it’s probably smart to now have too close a relationship with people that they have criticised.”
Crisis management expert Peter Wilkinson said the Stefanovic-Gardner on-air partnership would “bounce back” from the scandal.
“They’re silly boys having a silly conversation that they shouldn’t have had,” Mr Wilkinson — a former Nine journalist — said.
“And people will see it in that light. This will leave a negative one for those most affected.”
Mr Wilkinson said there was no doubt that Stefanovic — Nine’s golden boy — would keep his plum job as co-host of Today.
“People’s jobs in TV are more dictated by ratings than issues like this,” Mr Wilkinson said.
“What happens in these situations is the public makes their own judgment on these things.
“In this case, I think the public would see the Stefanovics as a couple of larrikins, rascals, ratbags, that’s the top-line reaction.
“That is a really dumb thing to do — have a personal conversation like that about colleagues in front of anybody else.”
Mr Wilkinson also said Stefanovic and Gardner should make light of the controversy when they are on-air together.
“The audience will watch the program for the next couple of weeks looking for some kind of rift. You won’t see a thing.
“If they’re clever enough to make light of it, then people will move on pretty quickly.”
It’s understood Nine had been aware of the leaked Uber call details for “a few weeks”, according to a source, and that it was “done and dusted”.