Danika Mason survived public condemnation and adoration in equal measure after appearing tipsy on Nine’s Today show during the Winter Olympics in February – but the sports reporter will walk away from the breakfast show after a turbulent year at the media company.
On Friday, Nine denied budget cuts had contributed to the decision for Mason to depart Today.
“I’ve had to make a decision on whether I come back next year,” she said on Today on Friday morning.
“And obviously juggling all my NRL commitments, Today show and then a new baby as well – something had to give and so I made the pretty tough decision. So when I return next year I won’t be coming back to (Today). It has been such a fun two years … I’ve had the best time.”
According to TV insiders, the vivacious reporter lost the backing of key executives following her giggly and garbled live cross from the Italian Alps in the opening weeks of the 2026 TV ratings season.
That was despite Mason’s slurred observations and sorrowful snow angels going viral internationally.
Nine bosses who hoisted the flag on a new era of cultural enlightenment and accountability in 2024 were left embarrassed by the incident, sources have told news.com.au.
“News bosses felt the incident damaged Nine’s news brand,” said one Nine insider.
Meanwhile, Mason’s on-air colleagues – including the program’s soon-to-be-sacked host Karl Stefanovic – laughed off the incident involving the knockabout reporter. She later apologised.
Nine bosses faced a dilemma.
It couldn’t be seen to sack or punish a woman for appearing drunk on national television when years earlier, it had rewarded the program’s anchor Stefanovic, a more senior staffer, for being in similar shabby shape the morning after the Logie awards in 2009.
In fact, Nine’s renowned boys club rewarded Stefanovic handsomely for his loose on-air appearance, and his contract quadrupled in the years that followed.
But money is no longer thrown around at Nine and contracts are being reined in.
Mason, who is said to be on $300,000, will now concentrate on her ongoing role on Nine’s Wide World Of Sports, though this wasn’t addressed in the emotional 7.45am announcement on Friday.
In a later statement supplied to news.com.au, Mason said: “Ultimately, with motherhood around the corner, something has to give, so while I’m devastated to farewell the Today family and our incredible audience I am very excited to return to covering rugby league when I return in 2027 for Nine’s biggest ever year of sport”.
Her departure, forecast here in July, is just the latest from the program, and comes after Stefanovic was sacked in June.
His removal preceded the departure of his co-host Sarah Abo, who took maternity leave before confirming she would not return, and popular weather man Tim Davies.
Sylvia Jeffreys and Tom Steinfort have replaced Stefanovic and Abo.
Mason’s broader role, which sees her host Nine’s Sunday Football Show and inject sideline commentary into the broadcaster’s rugby league coverage, appeared to have been reduced this year ,with Nine increasingly calling on former pro rugby league player Allana Ferguson and Emma Lawrence.
Mason will welcome her first child with rugby league player Liam Knight in December.
She was recruited to Today in February 2025 after replacing sacked former Today sports reporter Alex Cullen, who was axed weeks earlier for pocketing a $50,000 cheque from promoter Adrian Portelli.
Cullen later returned the money, but the incident put Today bosses on high alert about personality conduct.
Mason’s appointment over the more experienced Roz Kelly prompted Kelly to quit Nine in 2025.
The popular and younger Mason was tapped after receiving the endorsement of Rugby League Commission chair and influential Nine partner Peter V’landys.
Keshnee enjoys wave of support after cash settlement
Karl Stefanovic’s buyout of his podcast partner Keshnee Kemp Ibrahim’s 45 per cent share of their crumbling joint venture, The Karl Stefanovic Show, will be finalised today.
Sources for Ibrahim this week indicated the settlement had left her with a notable spring in her Italian sandals due to heightened interest in her marketing business and handy cash injection.
“Keshnee is very humbled by the growth of interest in her services. The support has been overwhelming,” said one.
“She is now getting ready to take the agency to the next level.”
The settlement, rumoured to be worth seven figures, comes almost three months after the relationship between the former friends fell apart in July after Stefanovic’s sacking from Nine.
This week, your columnist was told Stefanovic’s refusal to work with Samantha Armytage on Today – for years, the dream team pairing of Nine’s head of television Michael Healy – as well as his podcast interview with UK right-wing agitator Tommy Robinson may have also contributed to his demise at Nine.
Now, the breakfast television careers of both Stefanovic and Armytage, together and separate, look to be over.
Longtime readers of this columnist’s work will recall I first reported the bust up of the briefly chummy relationship between Armytage and Stefanovic in 2015, not long after he’d dubbed his breakfast television rival his “sister”.
The public love-in raised eyebrows at Channel 9, where Stefanovic was then presenting Today with Lisa Wilkinson.
“I love her” and “consider her family”, Stefanovic said of Armytage, who was at the time fronting Seven’s Sunrise with that program consistently beating Today in the ratings.
In the two years prior, Stefanovic had played a hand in recruiting Armytage to the talent agency of his friend and agent Sharon Finnigan.
The Stefanovic/Armytage alliance couldn’t survive Armytage ditching Finnigan in 2015, however, although the competing divas could turn on a congenial display when a charity fundraiser for a casino demanded it.
Usher singed by son’s cheeky comment
This column hears Seven personality Michael Usher was singed when his brief romantic liaison with Samantha Armytage was addressed on Kyle Sandilands Live this week.
Armytage was appearing on the off-Broadway show to spruik her new don’t-call-it-a-podcast podcast, Act Two.
Max Usher, the 20-year-old son of news reader Michael and an intern on the Sandilands’ podcast, was then wheeled out to put the question of the romantic pairing to Armytage.
This writer broke the story of the unlikely pairing in 2015 after Sunrise’s then-newsreader Natalie Barr, a long-time pal of Usher’s due to their shared Perth origin story, gave the then-Nine 60 Minutes reporter a nudge and encouraged him to ask Armytage, then co-host of Sunrise, out.
Barr had previously invited the two to her place for a barbecue.
Usher did ask Armytage for a date and it appeared the evening was off to a good start when she invited him to her Sydney home for dinner.
The date soured, however, when Usher arrived to discover Armytage had also invited her gay handbag, one-time Sunrise show executive producer Michael Pell, to join the couple.
Ouch.
And that was pretty much that.
Pell, meanwhile, is rumoured to be back in Armytage’s life playing an advisory role on her new podcast, which we’re sure can’t survive in its current hour-long format.
Could this mark the return of Seven’s former wonder boy to the entertainment game locally?