There are some parody clips of Karl Stefanovic gliding through social media feeds that the former TV host doesn’t seem to like.
According to the comedian behind the videos, Karlos followed the creator’s Instagram account, then … unfollowed. Now he suspects the former Channel 9 star has blocked him entirely.
Everyone else, however, is watching with glee. Including Lisa Wilkinson — Karl’s former Today co-host — who even reposted a clip that gently ribbed her own exit from the network after requesting pay parity. And Amanda Keller — Karl’s stablemate at Gold FM where he lasted only two shows before station-owner ARN parted ways with the host following the fallout from his controversial podcast — has been “liking” the clips.
Same with Gold Logie-nominated ABC favourite Lisa Millar. Channel 10-turned Nova FM star Sarah Harris has also reposted.
Inside the shiny Channel 9 tower at Denison Street in North Sydney, I’m told the clips are circulating freely — everyone’s cackling, from famous on-air colleagues to executives.
“Fair enough,” one Nine insider told me of the parody phenomenon. “If you’re prepared to [promote] free speech on one side, you’ve got to be prepared to take free speech from comedians making fun of you.”
For most of his nearly two decades on Today, Stefanovic fashioned himself as a loose unit legend who could party with the kids. Winning a Gold Logie (which Karl did achieve in 2011) might’ve been cool back in the days of Moonface Newton. But having your antics turned into a GIF on Pedestrian.TV? A decade ago, that was the kind of publicity other stodgy news presenters weren’t getting.
BuzzFeed ran a listicle in 2015 — “21 Times Karl Stefanovic Proved He Was The Greatest Morning Show Host” — after Karl hosted Today visibly drunk following the Logies, streaked on-air, and generally performed the role of the chaotic uncle everyone secretly wished they had.
He wore the same blue suit on air for a year to highlight double standards applied to women’s appearance. He championed same-sex marriage. Now, the host appears to have taken a left-turn into right-wing rage bait (climaxing with the recent interview with British far-right extremist Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon — better known as Tommy Robinson. The chat was followed by Karl losing both his jobs at Nine and Gold FM).
“Karl has always followed the headlines,” one of Stefanovic’s Channel 9 colleagues told me. “He doesn’t care what it takes.”
Another maintained the internal view at Channel 9 was one of sadness and surprise (“Karl was never a far-right wing activist. We didn’t see Karl on this trajectory! We didn’t think this at all made logical sense,” they said).
In 2024, Karl recorded a parody duet of Islands In The Stream with Adam Hyde — one half of dance music duo Peking Duk, who moonlights as the sequined, eyeliner-smeared solo project Keli Holiday. Complete with guy-liner and bare flesh, it was Karl at peak youth-bait.
Now, both Karl and Keli have gone from heavy hitters in the zeitgeist to punchlines. From men to memes. The reasons aren’t identical. Adam Hyde is known for his progressive persona that amplified when he began dating personality Abbie Chatfield. But the mockery of both blokes is a response to each of their performative characters and contradictions.
Henry Bretz, the 30-year-old content creator whose parody clips of Karl have gone nuts on social media, is struggling to match the pace of the host’s antics.
“The problem I’m running into with Karl is there’s simply too much content,” he said.
When we spoke on the phone, he was in the middle of editing one skit just as Stefanovic’s interview with Piers Morgan on a yacht in Cannes had been published.
“When I started parodying him, I worried I’d run out of stuff. But now I can’t keep up.”
The clip that started it all was an AI-generated nostalgia video Karl posted to promote his independent podcast, presenting himself as a salt-of-the-earth outsider. A man of the people. A true-blue Aussie battler who seemingly forgot he’d been earning millions of dollars for decades on mainstream media.
Bretz couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the disconnect between the Akubra-wearing bloke spinning a yarn with Pauline Hanson on the podcast, and the millionaire whose property portfolio includes a $3.6m mansion in Noosa and a $3.2m shack in Castlecrag on Sydney’s north shore that had approval granted for a $4.5 million rebuild.
“He was playing the role of an outsider when really he’s been at the centre of Australian mainstream media for 20 years,” Bretz said. “To clumsily reposition himself as an outsider was laughable.”
Bretz posted the first clip. Karl followed him a few hours later.
Then came a second clip — more pointed, mocking a particular anecdote Karl spun on his podcast about how his wife Jasmine “threw a sausage sandwich” at the TV because she was so outraged at Albo and the fuel crisis.
Karl’s official Instagram account no longer follows the comedian.
Now, Bretz said he can’t even search the host’s authorised profile on the social media platform. He suspects he has been blocked. (Most 16-year-olds in your life will explain that can be an indicator.)
My attempts to confirm this claim directly with Karl “The Beast” Stefanovic and his beast-wrangler producer Keshnee Kemp and manager Sharon Finnigan went unanswered.
Given Karl’s blazing mission for free speech, Bretz couldn’t help but laugh at the irony.
Fellow content creator Elliott Loney, who impersonates both Karl and Keli Holiday, has so far avoided the block.
“Karl still follows me,” he said, before cautiously double-checking his Insta app.
(Loney has only posted one Karlos parody clip … so far. “I’m currently finessing his voice. I plan to do more.”)
Loney has a theory about why both men became irresistible targets for mockery.
“It comes down to saturation. All I see on my algorithm is Karl Stefanovic or Keli Holiday. Or Dave Hughes,” he said. “In Australia, we’re not spoiled for choice with celebrities we can use for fodder.”
Both creators said they’d been receiving secret messages of approval from prominent media figures.
“Multiple people, some with very high profiles,” Loney said, declining to name names.
Bretz has gained about 17,000 new followers since he posted his first Karl skit in April and said he has clocked up over five million views.
One person close to Karl’s world suspected the host would bristle at his former network peers like Wilkinson and Keller publicly laughing. Another brought up the potential thinking of King Karlos — the conflict between his desire to be loved and his desire to simply be relevant.
“The greatest threat to him is becoming irrelevant and no one talking about him anymore — that’s what’s going to kill him. He will hate it,” this insider said.
Bretz is also conflicted.
“It’s scary how little difference there is between my clips and parts of Karl’s actual podcast,” he said.
He wonders whether the parodies are inadvertently helping Karl’s cause.
But then, he shrugs off the worry: “I wouldn’t give myself credit to say I’ve done more damage to him than he’s done to himself.”
What’s the difference between Karl the on-air journalist and Karl the meme?
“(He’s) A talented performer who may have let relevance get the better of him,” Bretz said.
Karl once seemed to think he was in on the joke. Now he has become the joke.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news.com.au ’
