Georgie Gardner Today signing means end in sight for Karl Stefanovic
TODAY’S new face Georgie Gardner has been told she will only have to sit next to her ‘blokey’ co-host for one year, Annette Sharp writes.
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Staff at the Nine Network are bracing for the ugly stoush said to be brewing between Today host Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson’s “no nonsense” successor, Georgie Gardner.
Within 90 minutes of the announcement on Thursday of Gardner’s appointment to the anchorwoman role on the national breakfast show, simmering onset tensions were exposed when the longtime newsreader pricked the divorce-fatigued Stefanovic by describing him as “promiscuous” during the pair’s PR interview on Nine’s morning show.
A stunned Stefanovic recoiled in shock as Gardner, unperturbed by his dramatic reaction, unapologetically ploughed on with a second statement about her co-host’s survival at the helm of Today for 12 years as three female anchors came and went. “You do the maths. There’ve been a few,” she said bluntly.
Gardner’s unwillingness to feign friendship with Stefanovic — even in the early minutes of their unlikely pairing as the new tag team in the unholiest of television rumbling arenas, the breakfast news timeslot — hints at an acrimony that runs deep.
Gardner, who quit as Today newsreader in 2014 due largely to Stefanovic’s unchecked juvenile blokey on-air antics, is said to take umbrage at the way Stefanovic’s “expansive ego” has been given free reign on the show.
Stefanovic in turn is said to be of the view Gardner is “humourless”.
Inside sources insist the pair cannot stand one another and add that Gardner’s appointment is the clearest sign yet that 2018 will be Stefanovic’s last year on Today.
“She signed on to the show after having been assured she would only have to do one year with Karl,” a senior executive confided.
“After that, he’s gone and Nine will recast and she will get to work with someone else.”
Stefanovic is said to have agreed to the union under the same conditions — that it be short-lived. He has been agitating for a move off the show for years.
But what other gig guarantees him his multimillion-dollar salary which a family member recently blurted was worth $3 million-a year — one million greater than the figure previously quoted and which, if true, would verge on being three times greater than the salary paid his departed co-host Wilkinson.
For those of us who championed Wilkinson’s fight for pay parity with Stefanovic (she was said to be on a package worth $1.1 million), word this week that the capable Gardner has signed a $750,000 contract comes as a blow to all women although it does represent a pay rise for Gardner who is believed to have been on $500,000 previously.
Regardless of the dollar-value Gardner puts on her talent, her precious sleep and her mornings with her two adored children, Nine boss Hugh Marks’s determination to sign Gardner might just give Today a slight edge over its rival Sunrise, which beats Today in the ratings.
Should hostilities between Gardner and Stefanovic flare during their breakfast broadcasts, Nine may find itself — in the short term at least — with a ratings hit on its hands as Stefanovic’s bombast sparks Gardner’s bristling smackdown drawing viewers.
Of course the realities of such tension will hit home first off screen — the traditional killing fields of television — where it is almost a certainty blood will be spilt.
After a three-year break from breakfast television Gardner looks at this moment to have a psychological advantage over Stefanovic.
She also has acquired some effective tools to manage him.
First out of her kit on Thursday was the Withering Look. Next came the Pointed Throwaway Remark, masterfully engaged with that “promiscuous” sleight.
Also in her collection was irony, a raised voice employed to drown Stefanovic out, frosty disregard, presented as a turned back, and even that dry sense of humour which while perhaps not to Stefanovic’s taste may well appeal to loyal Today show viewers.
With an arsenal like this at her disposal Gardner may, for the next year, manage to put on a quite a show while counting the moments until Stefanovic’s departure.