The Kyle and Jackie O Show was such a magnet for drama for two decades that when the end of the $200m dream radio partnership came – in the form of a nasty dressing down of Jackie “O” Henderson by Kyle Sandilands – many brushed it off as manufactured.
But it was made startlingly clear late on Tuesday that Sandilands’ tirade 10 days ago, which was described by Henderson as “mean and nasty”, was the beginning of the end.
Henderson walked off the show last week and lay low, while Sandilands told listeners she “wants a couple of days off to gather her thoughts” and would be back. Sandilands said on Tuesday he had written her a “love letter” and he was sorry.
But the fight spelled the end of a highly lucrative partnership which had garnered a landmark 10-year media deal just two years ago.
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On Tuesday the Australian Radio Network (ARN) announced it was taking the show off the air and accused Sandilands of “serious misconduct”.
On Friday 20 February Sandilands had accused Henderson of not doing her job, of being “unfocused” and “off with the pixies” because of her interest in astrology – she had been dissecting the birth chart of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor at the time. Sandilands told her on-air everyone had noticed how off her game she was.
An emotional Henderson said: “I would never say things like that about you. It’s a total attack, it really is … to say: ‘You don’t know what the F is going on, you’re not doing your job.’ That’s an attack and I wouldn’t do that.
“I totally am offended by you saying something like that.”
Henderson said in her memoir that much of what the two did on the show was “for shock value”, but this time she wasn’t faking it.
She told ARN she could no longer work with her on-air partner of 25 years and her contract was terminated.
“The KIIS breakfast show will be taken off-air effective immediately, with interim arrangements made for the show,” ARN said in its statement to the ASX on Tuesday.
Each performer had their own contract with ARN, so Sandilands is technically still under contract but has been suspended for 14 days because of his “serious misconduct”.
He will need to show how he will “remedy” the alleged breach of its “services agreement”, ARN said, but his contract will be ended if he fails to find a remedy. It was unclear how Sandilands could remedy the breach.
When Sandilands signed the deal, which was to run through to 2034, he said: “Love us or loathe us, Jackie and I will be continuing with our politically incorrect nonsense for a long, long time.”
But the nonsense ended abruptly a few months into the third year.
Sydney’s Kiis 106.5 and Melbourne’s Kiis 101.1 offered Sandilands and Henderson the record $200m contract to continue presenting the No 1 breakfast show in Sydney, but they wanted to extend it to Melbourne.
The broadcaster believed it was getting value as the pair boasted an audience of 1.5 million in Sydney alone. But the extension to Melbourne soon soured the deal.
A poor showing in the Melbourne ratings put stress on the golden couple and the show racked up multiple breaches of the broadcasting code.
A relentless social media campaign by the Facebook group Mad Fucking Witches was successful in damaging advertising revenue. The activist group launched a campaign that coincided with the expansion, accusing the show of normalising “violent misogyny”.
The Kyle & Jackie O Show drew nearly half of all decency complaints on Australian radio in the 2024-25 financial year.
Melbourne listeners did not embrace the crass couple from Sydney, despite claims by ARN management they had “removed the graphic sexual content” from the show.
Hours before the ASX announcement, Sandilands said there was “some sort of a statement coming from Jackie’s camp”, a sign he had no idea about the bombshell she was about to drop.
The show also faces enforcement action from the broadcasting regulator, which found last year the Kiis network repeatedly broadcast “vulgar” and “deeply offensive” content.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) published a notice of intention to impose an additional licence condition on Kiis, a regulatory tool not imposed on a licensee since 2Day FM’s infamous royal hoax call in 2012 to a London hospital where Kate Middleton was a patient.
Acma found seven breaches of decency rules as well as breaches of the complaint handling rules across Kiis 106.5 and Kiis 101.1.
The licence condition was that for five years the program must comply with the commercial radio code of practice and must not broadcast content “which is highly offensive to an ordinary reasonable listener or which contains strong and explicit sexual references”.
Sandilands threatened to walk off the job and dismissed complaints as coming from “pearl-clutchers … [who] don’t like me telling dick jokes”.
“I can finish work today and live happily ever after, raise my child, maybe buy a castle in France and be one of those guys that are continuing to render an old shitter for the rest of my life.”
He may have no choice.
