Karl Stefanovic has refused to rule out Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith as a future guest on his independent podcast, teasing "you'll have to watch" to the Sydney Morning Herald column that staked out his North Sydney gym. The stakeout came a day after Nine cut 30 newsroom jobs it blamed on an "extreme state of disruption because of AI."
The Herald's CBD column put the rumour to Stefanovic directly on Wednesday as he left Tim Gurner's Saint Haven health club in North Sydney, a short walk from Nine's headquarters. "I haven't chatted with him yet," Stefanovic said. Pressed on when an interview would happen: "You'll have to watch, my friend."
If it's true, it's the interview of the decade. Roberts-Smith is Australia's most decorated living soldier and his case is currently before the courts. Every network in the country would clear its schedule for that sit down. Instead it would land on the independent podcast Nine let walk out the door, the same show that is already pulling the audience Today keeps losing and has drawn Barnaby Joyce and British broadcaster Piers Morgan.
The SMH staked out Karl's gym a day after Nine axed 30 journalists
One day after 30 journalists across the Herald, The Age, Brisbane Times and WA Today were told their jobs were gone, the Herald still had a photographer waiting outside a North Sydney health club at lunchtime, hoping to catch Stefanovic leaving a workout. It got exactly that: a man leaving a workout. The column's justification for running it anyway was "this time we've got pictures", and its analysis was a guess that he's "got himself locked into a pricey gym membership he's struggled to get out of". For a paper that keeps insisting Karl no longer matters, that is a lot of effort to photograph him moving on.
Call it Karl Stefanovic Derangement Syndrome. The establishment insists he no longer matters, then assigns a photographer to his gym schedule.
Nine's mastheads have been chasing Roberts-Smith for years
Before any of that history, a question of honesty and transparency. As One News Australia broke the story and revealed last week, Nine has taken $16.1 million from the Albanese Government's Journalism Assistance Fund, a taxpayer subsidy on the wages of roughly 375 of its journalists, about 22% of the entire fund, drip fed against progress reports the government must be satisfied with. Not one funded newsroom is required to tell its readers it's on the books.
Six days before Nine blamed AI for the cuts, Anthony Albanese launched his National AI Plan and told an audience at the University of Sydney:
"We should not treat AI as a threat to good jobs, we must use it as an instrument to create them." — Anthony Albanese
In short, Nine banked $16.1 million from the Labor government to help pay those very journalists and thirty of them are now gone, cut by a company blaming the exact technology the Prime Minister said should create jobs, not end them. Whatever Labor's plan protects, it clearly isn't reaching the newsroom floor.
Something else we need to keep in mind; Roberts-Smith is being prosecuted by the Commonwealth. The journalists covering that prosecution at the Herald and The Age are part paid by the Commonwealth, and they don't have to disclose it. Keep that in mind with every word Nine's mastheads publish about him from here.
The stakeout target and the rumoured guest aren't a random pairing. The long running investigation into Roberts-Smith was led across Nine's own mastheads, the Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes, a matter of public record from the defamation case Roberts-Smith brought against Nine and lost on the civil standard. His criminal case is now before the courts, with a fresh hearing pushed to September, and the question of how a single camera crew came to be waiting airside for his arrest at Sydney Airport is sitting with the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
Nine's cameras haven't let up since. When a court cleared Roberts-Smith to attend the Anzac Hall opening last month, it was Channel 9's own court reporter who questioned outside court whether he should go, an exchange that made the network the story. Roberts-Smith proudly responded:
"Absolutely. I'm a Victoria Cross recipient." — Ben Roberts-Smith
And it hasn't only been Nine's media wing. Senior Liberal Andrew Hastie, a former SAS troop commander, gave evidence against Roberts-Smith in the defamation trial he lost, telling the court he was "no longer proud" of him. Turning on his fellow conservatives has become something of a pattern, and lately his target is One Nation.
Last month he said he'd "rather be taken out in a box than bend the knee to One Nation", then went back for more, quoting Sun Tzu to promise "they shall have war" as the One Nation wave kept building. Anthony Albanese cheered him on, which tells you plenty, and One Nation is already treating a state by-election inside his own seat of Canning as a dry run to unseat him.
If the Roberts-Smith interview happens, there'll be some uncomfortable viewing in Canberra as well as North Sydney.
30 jobs go as Nine's boss dances around the AI question
Nine announced the 30 redundancies across its metro publishing division on Tuesday, in what publishing boss Tory Maguire's note to staff called a shift towards "the digital-first future". They come on top of 20 roles cut from Nine's news and current affairs division in April.
Asked whether AI drove the cuts, Nine Entertainment chief executive Matt Stanton would say only that they were "not directly" related to the company's increasing use of it, news.com.au reported. "We are constantly evolving our business model," he said, before producing the night's most memorable phrase:
"I think people have got to realise it's not just journalism. It's journalistic journalism and I mean that by investment in tech and product as well."
The journalists' union called the announcement devastating. "Newsrooms cannot keep absorbing job cuts without consequences for workloads, diversity, quality journalism, and the ability of journalists to hold power to account," the MEAA said.
Stanton admits Nine approved Karl's podcast all along
Stanton's harder job at the ABC's Andrew Olle media lecture on Tuesday night was explaining Stefanovic's exit. Asked by host Hamish Macdonald whether Nine knew the direction Stefanovic planned to take his podcast, Stanton told the room, in comments reported by the Herald:
"Yeah, we did know as part of the process. He was coming towards the end of his contract with us and we absolutely did allow him to do the podcast, and he wanted to do the podcast and explore in that area."
That's a very different story from the one that's been running for a month. Stefanovic left Today immediately in late June after his podcast interview with UK activist Tommy Robinson, an exit Nine's statement at the time said came because it was "no longer possible for him to continue hosting Today at the same time as his independent podcast". Radio network ARN dropped him from his radio show days later, and The Conversation branded the podcast "journalistic laundering".
Asked why Nine didn't simply have Stefanovic cover Robinson through 60 Minutes, Stanton replied:
"I have to ask the 60 Minutes guys that. We could have had that interview with Tommy Robinson. The way Karl did it is the way Karl wanted to do it. It's his podcast."
Macdonald noted Stefanovic declared himself free and truly independent on the way out, and asked whether that meant he wasn't free at Nine. The best Stanton could offer: "There's different editorial standards and genres, not genres, but audiences and stuff."
ABC managing director Hugh Marks was blunter, saying Stefanovic's talk of being free was "obviously saying he's free of standards". The sneering hasn't dented the numbers: even the Prime Minister has weighed in on him, and sponsor Ringers Western publicly stood by him when The Australian went after that relationship.
Nine's June statement said it was "no longer possible" for Stefanovic to host Today alongside his independent podcast. A month later, the network's chief executive says Nine knew where the podcast was headed and "absolutely did allow" it.
The numbers behind the swagger are real. The Karl Stefanovic Show has passed 100,000 YouTube subscribers, and on engagement it already outperforms The Today Show he left, running 4.36% on TikTok against Today's 3.66%. It has captured the male audience commercial breakfast television keeps shedding, now close to 60% of its following, and drawn guests from Barnaby Joyce to Piers Morgan, with Elon Musk amplifying him to millions on X.
Today, meanwhile, slid to a 2026 low of 230,000 viewers. The show Nine decided it could do without is the one still adding them.
