OPINION
Put down the crystal balls, ditch the tarot, no need to keep scrying: Who will take over the still-warm Today sofa from Karl ‘maaaaaate’ Stefanovic, has been decided.

It’s one of the most coveted jobs in the industry, where for 21 years Stefanovic raked in millions to do his everyman schtick for bleary eyed morning punters, and now we know who will replace him. A man. A white one. Between the ages of about 40 and 50. Does it even matter which one?

Can anyone, aside from their spouses, agents and their teeth buffers, actually tell the difference between reported contenders James Bracey (as exclusively reported by news.com.au’s Mary Madigan), Tom Steinfort, Charles Croucher, David Campbell, Mike Willesee Jr, Brenton Ragless and Ben Fordham? (Though Fordham’s already said he doesn’t want it).

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With no disrespect to Bracey et al, who all sound like decent blokes with pleasingly pedestrian personal lives and who know which way’s up with a microphone, could you find a more boring, bland, beige clutch of candidates?

It’s 2026 and the best that TV bosses can do is an interchangeable identity parade of inoffensive, white bread men who could all have subbed in for Bruce Gyngell when he launched TV in Australia in 1956. Take that progress!

Whoever will ultimately be subbed in for Karl, really, who cares? It’s a foregone conclusion.

All of the Today prospects have very very white teeth, do a nice line in marshmallowy co-hosting patter and can be safely sent off to do a matey, look-we’re-both-wearing-akubras interviews with the PM or to be dispatched to broadcast from the natural disaster du jour.

They are all a Safe Pair of Hands who won’t rock a single solitary boat with their centrist Dad views and refusal to do or say anything even remotely interesting or venture an original thought on a thorny subject while on air. It’s banality as a superpower.

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We all know the breakfast TV drill. You are allowed to have one man and one woman. She is generally younger than him and her KPI is to play the school marmish straight man to the Replace-a-Karl’s laddish banter. He will get to be the cheeky chappie, quipping along as the nation spoons up milk-sodden cereal, because that makes him relatable while she can’t because she would be written off as a bit of an airheady twit. Standards? It’s double or nothing.

Based on the current pool of names for the Today gig, whichever option bosses choose won’t provoke any Hanson-ian yapping about how woke agendas have come for the sacred cow of breakfast TV.

Sure, over 29 per cent of our population was born overseas and 48 per cent of us have a parent born overseas, according to the Human Rights Commission, and yet the only names being circulated for one of the biggest jobs in TV are all whiter than ‘after’ part in a Napisan commercial.

Fine, TV has never been that representative of who we are as a country but the stark, bleak difference between the faces we see on our screens and who we are a nation is just bloody ridiculous.

Six per cent. That’s the percentage of news and current affairs reporters, presenters and commentators on free to air television who were either of an Indigenous or non-European background in 2019, according to research done by Media Diversity Australia. Anyone think the figure is much higher now?

Then 37.5 per cent. That’s how many ‘Marks’ there are currently presenting news and current affairs shows on commercial networks in Sydney and Melbourne. (Peter Overton, Mark Burrows, Steinfort, Mark Ferguson, Mark Usher, Peter Mitchell, Mike Amor, and Anton Enus. The ABC has Iskhandar Razak and Jeremy Fernandez, SBS has Anton Enus and Channel Ten’s anchors are both female.)

With Today’s ratings “in freefall”, as Peter Meakin, the former head of News and Current Affairs at Seven, Nine and 10 recently told the ABC, is adding in a new ‘Karl’ the way to staunch the bleeding?

It feels like we are in the twilight of broadcast TV and trotting out the tired Blonde + Good Bloke TV formula is not going to save the day.

At least Today, to their credit, courageously flirted with a different template when, in 2019, they boldly shook things up and experimented with having two women – Georgie Gardner and Debrah Knight – fronting the flagship show. Audiences took to the concept like Spam-flavoured Moove, and in less than a year Nine bosses were back on the blower to Karl to get him to re-assume his place on the Kingdom of the Couch. In hindsight pairing two experienced, but flavour-free, TV hands with practical haircuts the exact same shade of blonde was about as exciting a combo as serving a Salada on top of a Sao.

Australian TV as a whole has become so horribly tired. We no longer make brilliant comedies, like Kath and Kim or Frontline, or incredible dramas, like Underbelly or Brides of Christ or Blue Murder.

The invasion of the audience snatchers – the streamers – has left Australian TV in a place where networks are desperately trying catch audiences’ attention by casting aspirant influencers stained like teak decks in 48-hour marriages with farmers while they are all naked and afraid and being made to cook souffles against a ticking clock.

The issue with whichever Repli-Karl gets his old job is not simply that they are all lemmingly samey-same looking but does one of them have anything to actually say – or more accurately, will say? What about considering hiring a bloke who is not only good talent, irrespective of his ethnicity, background or how many old school ties he can boast, and who is willing to actually use their voice? Who reflects Australia in 2026 and not who we were during the Suez crisis?

The betting on the exact Today name is still open but whoever runs the show’s wardrobe department may as well start prepping the prop Akubra and navy two piece-rs now. There’s really no difference who is going to end up putting them on.

Daniela Elser is an editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with Australia’s leading media titles.