Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson’s breakfast show on KIIS FM was an ongoing publicity stunt, long peppered by fights, walkouts, scandals and health scares, with regular slaps on the wrist by the Australian Communications and Media Authority failing to kerb Sandilands’ enthusiasm for below-the-belt crudity.
Amid the damp lettuce, they always kissed and made up and sometimes apologised.
It says something about modern life in general, and Sydney in particular, that the demise of the Kyle & Jackie O show is now sucking oxygen from issues that matter in real life.
The owner of KIIS FM, ARN, told the ASX on Tuesday that Henderson had “given notice she cannot continue to work with Sandilands” almost two weeks after an on-air falling-out. He had berated her interest in horoscopes during a discussion on defrocked prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Sandilands has been taken off and given two weeks to reconsider his position and “remedy a serious breach of contract”. She has been offered another time slot.
Whatever lies behind the split, it certainly looks as if commercial overreach and societal change combined to end a partnership that has increasingly felt like a relic from a yesteryear.
Sandilands and Henderson had made a profitable career out of bad taste and bickering since joining forces more than 25 years ago. Henderson had been on air during most of the 1990s with her first husband, Ugly Phil (O’Neil). He forged the crude path later trodden by Sandilands while she honed her schtick as the shocked, grounded but supportive partner.
Once Sandilands and Henderson got together, they were a never-ending success story.
They had a lock on the teenage listeners and 25-54-year-olds, the demographic of most interest to radio advertisers and politicians. Everyone gets the retail political calculation involved in appearing on a popular radio show, but their mutual needs sometimes make room for strange arrangements: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Premier Chris Minns were among Sandilands’s new close friends who attended his second marriage in April 2023.
That year, he and Henderson were reportedly radio’s highest paid double act when they signed to a record-breaking $200 million 10-year contract. The following year, ARN sicced this embarrassing Sydney media phenomenon onto Melbourne FM radio, where they promptly fell flat on their faces.
The Melbourne failure ended their golden era, especially after a long-running advertiser boycott campaign started to bite and their reported pay packets started to weigh on company profits.
In full-year results released last week, ARN said that KIIS’s performance suffered from “heightened advertiser sensitivity to brand safety” and revenue across both of its networks, KIIS and Gold, declined by 16 per cent, or $28.3 million.
Once, Sandilands and Henderson racked up 50 straight radio ratings wins in Sydney. But those days have long gone.
With listening tastes changing and audiences leaving for new digital, on-demand and personalised audio alternatives, the old insulting, demeaning and crude stuff that fuelled their ratings’ success for decades is no longer acceptable. Sandilands and Henderson have become prisoners of their own longevity.
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