From Kyle to Karl: Media companies nurture personalities they ultimately can’t control

June 24, 2026 — 4:04pm

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You can only imagine the despair in the offices of KIIS and Gold radio network owner ARN on Wednesday.

Just a week after settling the company’s legal battles against controversial broadcaster Kyle Sandilands, who it sacked in part because advertisers feared the social media blowback that came with appearing on his show, it finds its cleanskin new star is not so clean.

Enter controversial broadcaster Karl Stefanovic, who has signed up to do a weekly show on Gold, only to join Sandilands as another of mainstream media’s largest headaches.

Stefanovic’s recent wing-spreading podcast, in which he sympathetically interviewed and praised the British hard-right extremist Tommy Robinson (the latest in a long line of conservative culture wars guests), ruffled enough feathers to have it ‘disappeared’ from the usual online platforms – only to be reposted by Hanson on her YouTube channel.

At this stage, no one is owning up to attempts to bury the Stefanovic-Robinson content.

Neither Stefanovic’s........

© The Sydney Morning Herald