We all know him as one of the ever-present faces of the Today show and Golden Logie winner. For the last eight years he has graced our television screens day-in, day-out, one of the few constants in the unpredictable world of television. However when he’s not sitting alongside Lisa Wilkinson in the Channel Nine studios, Karl Stefanovic is just your average Lindfield resident.

On the weekend, if he’s not at the park with his three children, he spends time at the local butchers sourcing the best types of the South African delicacy, biltong. “I am a biltong aficionado,” says Karl, “there’s a butcher at St Ives, Stanley Street Butcher, who makes without a doubt the greatest biltong I’ve ever had. So on the weekend I like to go round and hassle them”.

Although Karl says he is lucky to have the weekend off to spend time with his family, during the week his work schedule is quite intense. At the time of the interview he has only been off air for 15 minutes, and he’s already been up since 3.25am. Or 3.27am if you count the two minutes he sits on the end of his bed every morning, saying, “What, what, do I have to do this again?”

However everyday in less than an hour he has always left home and is busy catching up on the news at Channel Nine before going on air.
But surely there must be those mornings where he doesn’t feel like spending 3.5 hours in front of 330,000 people? Although Karl admits that on Mondays he sometimes feels a little out of the television rhythm it doesn’t faze him.

“What I do is a show everyday, so it’s my job to be up and to be performing in whatever capacities that might be. So that’s the way I treat it and once you’ve got that mentality it’s pretty easy to lift yourself,” he says. The upside of the early mornings for Karl is being there to pick up his children from school every afternoon, which he describes as one of the “great privileges” of his job.

After spending his time in front of a screen at Channel Nine for twelve years now, eight of which have been on the Today show, Karl makes hosting look easy, whether he’s covering a leaf blower competition or interviewing Tony Abbott, as he has been on the morning of the interview. Yet when he started working at Today the constant switch between harder news stories and more lighthearted interviews was the most challenging part of the job. Over the years he has developed his own way of mastering this transition.

“I do it much easier now than I used to, I was always very conscious of being able to ‘switch gears’ as they say in the game, but now I think that the less you try, and the less focus you put on changing gears, the easier it is for the audience.”

Karl has enjoyed both the light-hearted moments and more serious stories that he has reported on in his career as a journalist. He points to the Royal Wedding and Jubilee as two of the more exciting things he has been given the opportunity to cover. While he says he is most proud of his coverage of the Queensland floods in 2011, and the US presidential race in 2008.

Lately it has been rumoured that Karl has been planning a permanent move from Today to 60 Minutes, where he already works casually alongside his breakfast gig. Although Karl admits that for a while this had been on the cards, after giving it some thought he realised that the combination of the the two shows was the best for him.

“I know that the guys on 60 Minutes work incredibly long hours overseas, and I just think that with my young family that the timing’s not right for me to be away for five to six weeks at a time.”

Originally from Queensland, he doesn’t have any plans to leave the North Shore either. “You know I love the North Shore, and I love the community feeling of it, it’s the closest thing to Queensland that I’ve experienced in Sydney. So we really enjoy living here and I can’t imagine us moving.” Not only that, but where else would he find his favourite wagyu beef biltong?