Long-serving Today show host now yesterday’s man

Karl Stefanovic’s fate on Nine was sealed once he lost his likeability.

Karl Stefanovic with shoe designer Jasmine Yarbrough at Sydney’s Rose Bay during the early days of their relationship. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Why has Karl Stefanovic been booted from the Nine Network’s Today show?

Was it the fact that he left his wife? Did he move on too quickly?

Was the final straw that big fat Mexican wedding, with Karl’s new bride in a mullet dress?

Or was it viewer reaction to picture­s of his ex, drinking alone on a windswept beach, butting her ciggies into an empty wine bottle?

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In truth, it was none of the above, yet at the same time it was all of those things: Karl in the end simply lost his likeability, and you are dead in TV without that.

How did it happen?

Let’s unpack.

Karl started as Today’s co-host in 2005, and for years he was Nine’s wonder boy. Handsome, cheeky, charming and funny, he was a perfect person to sit beside the elegant Lisa Wilkinson.

Their job, as everyone who watches morning TV knows, is to bring a little brightness to your day.

I wake up with Today.

That was their slogan, and peopl­e — mainly women, who make up the bulk of the audience — were happy to do it. They were happy to wake up with a person as likeable — remember that word, we’re coming back to it — as Karl appeared to be, and also he was a little bit naughty.

Who could forget the time he got drunk at the Logies and had to turn up to work the next day, barely getting through the program?

Lisa held that show together.

We loved them both for it.

Karl would go on to win the Gold Logie for most popular TV talent in 2011. Ratings for Today were soaring, advertising dollars were rolling in, and Nine’s managers rubbed their hands with glee.

And then he dumped his wife.

Karl Stefanovic with wife Cassandra Thorburn in 2011.

Look, it happens.

Karl and his missus, as he called her, Cassandra Thorburn, had been together two decades and had three kids, but their union had apparently been under pressure for a while, and the split should not have cost him his job.

Marriage is hard, people get that.

Divorce is painful.

Karl should have let the audience see his sadness. He should have taken some time out.

Instead, within months, female readers of weekly magazines — there is a lot of crossover between their readership and the Today audience — were being treated to pictures of Karl on a yacht with a blonde who is not, but appears to be, half his age.

Her name, we learned, was Jasmin­e Yarbrough.

She was pretty and leggy and designed shoes for a living, and Karl was apparently smitten. Soon they were prancing around on ­social media, with Jasmine in a ­bikini.

Meanwhile, Cass was being photographed taking out the ­garbage and gamely doing the school run. Ratings for Today started ­sinking.

Why? Because female viewers didn’t like it.

Nobody really knows what goes on in a marriage, but they felt it wasn’t respectful to Cass.

Then, in October last year, Lisa Wilkinson quit her spot on the desk next to Karl. Nine likes to play down the significance of this actually quite seismic moment in the timeline of their star’s demise.

Stefanovic drunk on air in 2009 after the Logies.

The Karl-Lisa break-up was at least as public as the Karl-Cass break up — and again, the largely female audience was on the woman’s side.

Lisa had for years been the relia­ble one (never turning up drunk, for example) and yet she was getting paid a whole lot less, and so she walked.

And given the times in which we live — female empowerment, and so on — there was quite a bit of “You go, girl!” from the audience.

Nine seemed not to notice.

It tapped Georgie Gardner, an excellent choice for morning television — except that she and Karl don’t like each other, and the ­camera can see it.

The camera sees everything.

One week after Lisa’s exit, Cass spoke to Woman’s Day about her pain and misery.

“I realised I was going through stages of grief, and to me it was like someone had died,” she told the magazine.

“The children still have a father but I don’t have a husband.”

Nine stumbled on, trying to manufacture a chemistry between Karl and Georgie, who then gave an interview to Stellar magazine in which she said: “Good chemistry doesn’t necessarily equate to being best friends … it’s knowing when to let each other shine.”

She wasn’t talking about Cass. She was talking about her own relation­ship with Karl. Not to put too fine a point on it, they were barely tolerating each other.

Into this mess waded a lovesick Karl, who decided to hold a “commitment ceremony” with Jasmine.

His youngest children Ava, 13, and River, 11, were told to attend, but reportedly ran away to a beach below, and had to be fetched back.

The media covered all of it.

Then came Ubergate.

A taxi driver had a recording of a private phone conversation betwe­en Karl and his brother Peter in which they bitched about Georgie and others at the Nine Network.

If you’re looking for a real turning point, don’t ignore this one. This really was the beginning of the end. Karl had for a while been trending towards no longer being likeable, but now he had dissed his colleagues, some of whom had been willing to see him through the strife in his private life.

This looked like disloyalty — which, at Nine, is punishable by death.

Unless you’re rating, which he wasn’t.

Stefanovic with friend James Packer in 2012.

But on they went, first with Jasmin­e’s hens’ night — more shots of her in short skirts, shouting and screaming on the streets of Melbourne — while Cassandra stayed home and cleaned the ­toilet. Women weren’t thinking: ‘Yay, Karl.’ They were thinking: “What an arse.”

A year from now, viewers may well have been happy for him. But so soon after the demise of a two-decade marriage?

Ratings plunged to a 12-year low. Nine should at this point have taken stock and reined in its golden boy. It didn’t.

More reports of discord emerge, with Karl’s eldest son apparent­ly changing his name from Stefanovic to Thorburn.

By the time we got to the actual wedding, you could smell the rot from Sydney.

The A-list didn’t turn up.

Karl Stefanovic and Jasmine Yarbrough with their bridal party at their wedding in Cabo. Picture: Supplied

James Packer, for example. The whole reason they had the wedding in Mexico was so he’d go (he often stays at the place where they held the reception), but even he was sensible enough to stay away.

The broadcaster Alan Jones likewise demurred.

Paps were left with Jazzy and her family and Karl and the kids, one of whom has been quoted this week as calling the wedding “shit”.

The other two? Well, ring-bearers they certainly weren’t, let’s put it that way.

Back home, Cassandra insisted she was over the break-up, while telling reporters the kids went to Karl’s wedding only because it was in the custody agreement — they had to spend that particular week with Dad.

Remember that word we mentioned before? Likeability?

It’s so essential on TV.

You’ve got to come across as nice, friendly, warm, kind.

The young newsreader.

Today is a morning TV show. It goes on just as mum gets the kids up and it stays on while she makes the lunchboxes. It’s pleasant, amiabl­e, background noise.

Plenty of people get a little bit of news from morning TV: sport, the weather, and the royals.

It comes into its own during flood, drought or bushfire.

They show off new products, and give away money — the Cash Cow has near-perfect likeability — and you can see some big stars, who come in to promote their movies or their new music.

All very nice, all very pleasant — and in this calm pond, you had Karl and his Bundy Bar, and the bride in a mullet dress.

What was likeable about this?

This was a rolled-gold catastrophe. It could not have been handled with less elan. He lost his likeability, and from the moment that happened he was doomed.

Indeed, the mystery isn’t why Karl got boned — such a good Nine word, that one — but why it took so long. The answer can be found in Nine’s DNA.

Under Kerry Packer, the bywor­d there was loyalty.

Karl was close to James Packer. He was close to Nine chief Hugh Marks. He was close to Today’s producer Mark Calvert, who left this week. Those relationships were built up over many years.

They were loyal to him for good reason. For 10 years, he put in the hard yards: 3am starts for a decade. Not that long ago, they were beggin­g him to stay. He wanted a meaty gig on 60 Minutes, they had to throw money at him to stop him from leaving.

But life comes at you fast.

Daily Mail Australia and sites like it have added a new dimension. The sheer number of stories, dozens of them every day, with pictures of poor Cass looking downcast, and a blissed-out Karl in the arms of his beloved, became unbearable.

Add to that the fact that Karl had drifted from old friends such as Nine buddy Ben Fordham. He also dropped Lisa, who for years had been intense­ly loyal to him.

Plus the agony updates from Cass just didn’t stop. She was in the news again yesterday, telling a reporte­r that Karl’s new wife had paid for five make-up artists to fly to Mexico from LA to make sure everyone looked lovely.

“I know because I get the bills, sweetheart,” she was quoted as saying. “I still have to pay half the bills, don’t I?”

Then, of course, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the media keeps saying he’s going, going until he’s … well, you’re no longer Today but yesterday’s man, and very soon forgotten.