Remembering The High Point Of Karl Stefanovic’s ‘Today’ Career: The Duck Incident

Look, you’re a savvy digital media consumer. You know how this works. Something big happens in the news and outlets like us will do follow-ups related to that thing while the interest in that topic is high. A clever move for a media outlet like us to do in the wake of Karl Stefanovic getting the boot from The Today Show would be to do something like ‘Remembering Karl Stefanovic’s Loosest Moments’ or whatever. But I am not going to do that, because all I want to do is one thing: I want to talk about that time they caught a live duck during a live cross and your mate Karlos had to deal with it.

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Let’s set the scene. It’s 2011. Specifically, the morning of Thursday, July 14. Jason Derulo is terrifyingly close to the top of the charts and the final installment in the original Harry Potter series is just about to hit cinemas. Karl Stefanovic is where he always is on a weekday morning, occupying a suit and a couch in whichever top secret, subterranean studio (the windows are fake) plays host to The Today Show.

On this fine morning, they are chatting to Paul Burt, a man they have described as a ‘shark expert’. Burt is there to talk to them about unconfirmed shark sightings in the Gold Coast‘s Lake Evandale that saw the lake temporarily closed (no shark was ever found).

As a fun little segment, they prompt Burt to cast a lure out far into the lake — which he does beautifully — giving him “one chance to catch this shark“. But he doesn’t catch a shark. He doesn’t catch a fish either. Burt swiftly becomes aware that he has, instead, caught a duck.

While the prospect of reeling in a fish on live television is not a particularly terrifying for viewers, the prospect of sinking a barbed hook into the meaty part of a duck and bringing it into shore despite its protestations is. Both Burt and Stefanovic urge the people who control these sorts of things to switch to another short, which they do eventually, leaving Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson to swim through a palpable broth of awkwardness as they try and continue the show.

Truly, one of the great television moments of our time. RIP Karl.

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