Updated ,first published
Controversial KIIS radio presenter Kyle Sandilands has insisted his co-host, Jackie “O” Henderson, will return to their show but would not provide a date for her comeback, as her refusal to return to the studio after he berated her on air extends into a second week.
Henderson took last week off after Sandilands berated her during a live broadcast on February 20, criticising her work ethic because she had looked into horoscopes during a discussion on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, which he said was part of a wider pattern.
“You’re off with the fairies, you are unfocused, you don’t give a shit … everyone in this building has mentioned it to me,” Sandilands told Henderson during the show as she fought back tears.
Henderson had been expected to return to the highest-paid radio show in the country on Monday, but Sandilands told listeners she would not be on air for the second week in a row.
On Tuesday morning, Sandilands said Henderson’s camp was preparing a statement that would say she was “returning in the future”, though he did not give any further details about when that would be, or in what capacity.
“It’s a tender situation here with the Jackie situation. And it’s sort of out of my hands, even though I lit the match,” Sandilands said at the beginning of Tuesday’s show.
“I signed off yesterday on some sort of a statement from Jackie’s camp and at the end I noticed, this is the only thing I really noticed, that Jackie will be returning in the future.”
“That was a good sign. So the intention is to come back, which is fabulous.”
Some senior industry figures have suggested Henderson may negotiate a return to the show in a reduced capacity.
The Kyle and Jackie O Show is only two months into the second year of a 10-year, $200 million contract on KIIS FM. It is by some distance the most lucrative contract in Australian media, and was designed to reflect the pair’s growing dominance in Sydney and planned expansion to other key metropolitan markets, such as Melbourne and Brisbane.
The show launched into Melbourne two years ago, but it has floundered in the city. In the breakfast slot, which traditionally demands more advertising revenue than any other time of day, KIIS has lost more than 220,000 listeners under Sandilands and Henderson, or 36 per cent of its audience.
Hundreds of staff have been made redundant by KIIS’s owner, ARN, over the two years since the contract was signed, and there were more job cuts this week, this masthead has confirmed. ARN declined to comment.
Last year, ARN was forced to rethink its approach to the Kyle and Jackie O Show national rollout, which was part of the contract the pair signed that runs until 2034. It has been forced to deploy additional censors on the show after breaches of industry codes relating to decency 12 times in 2025 alone.
Poor ratings have been compounded by a prolonged campaign by activist group Mad F—ing Witches, which has resulted in falling metro advertising revenue and lost ground to its main competitors, Nova and Southern Cross Austereo.
In Brisbane, the network brought back the previously dumped breakfast trio Robin, Kip & Corey for 2026, and it has also hired former Nova and triple j personalities Ben Harvey and Liam Stapleton to start in Adelaide next month. Sandilands and Henderson do not broadcast in those markets.
In the company’s full-year results released last week, ARN said KIIS’s performance suffered from “heightened advertiser sensitivity to brand safety” impacting revenue. ARN’s metro revenue across both of its networks, KIIS and Gold, declined by 16 per cent, or $28.3 million.
Last month, The Kyle and Jackie O Show dropped to a 5 per cent share in the eighth and final radio ratings survey of the year for Melbourne. It remains one of the top shows in Sydney, but its share has suffered somewhat during the same period, as have total listeners to the show.
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Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.
