KIIS FM has addressed the spectacular implosion of Australia’s most expensive radio program –the Kyle & Jackie O show, which has dominated the Sydney FM market for decades – at the start of Wednesday’s live broadcast.
Fill-in presenter Ken “Smallzy” Small told listeners: “This is not how I expected to be here on a Wednesday morning. I’ve got a statement that I’ve been asked to read before we start this morning.”
The stand-in broadcast came after KIIS’s parent company ARN announced to the stockmarket late on Tuesday that Henderson would no longer present The Kyle & Jackie O Show and that Sandilands had been suspended for two weeks because of his “serious misconduct”. It said it would offer her another show on its KIIS network.
“So for our KIIS listeners, we’ve got some important news for you,” Small said. “Jackie has given notice that she can no longer continue to work on the show with Kyle on breakfast. As such, Jackie has now officially left the show. Kyle has been given 14 days to remedy a serious breach of contract in respect of the show. He’ll not be on air during this time. If that does not happen, that contract will be terminated. That’s what I have been told and asked to read you. You’ve officially heard it from us.
“There’s a saying in showbiz that the show must go on. You’re all back to work today. You’re waking up living your life. My name is Smallzy. I am not here to replace either of them. I am just going to get us through what is as a – I love radio and as someone who has grown up listening to the Kyle & Jackie O show, it is as much a shock to me as it would be to you hearing it. But it is Wednesday morning and it is a new day, so let’s go.”
Prior to the Kyle & Jackie O show’s expansion to Melbourne in 2024, the program was crucial to ARN’s financial success – as evidenced by the struggles that Sandilands and Henderson’s former station, 2Day FM, has suffered in the breakfast slot since they were poached by ARN in 2013. The company paid a large sum to lure them – and in 2023, it signed the duo to a record-breaking $200 million contract, to secure their services for another 10 years.
Multiple sources at KIIS’s parent company ARN, who are not authorised to comment publicly, have told this masthead they were “overjoyed” and “relieved” by the news.
One ARN worker told this masthead: “We’ve been through hundreds of lay-offs since [Sandilands and Henderson] signed their contract at the end of 2023.
“The fact is, that outlay has never been justified by the ad revenue they were bringing in. Sure, Kyle and Jackie have always done well in Sydney but Melbourne has been a disaster. The initial idea was that we’d introduce the show to Melbourne and then Brisbane before rolling it out nationally – but their performance in Melbourne was so bad that it effectively put the brakes on that plan, which forced the company to make all these severe job cuts.”
In Sydney, where the Kyle & Jackie O show is ahead of all its FM competitors, the pair ended 2025 with 12.7 per cent of the available audience. But in Melbourne, they sank to a new low of 5 per cent, placing them in eighth position overall. (The first radio ratings survey of 2026 will be released in mid-March.)
“I think it’s fair to say this is a blessing in disguise – or maybe just a blessing, full stop,” said one ARN insider. “The big risk is that KIIS will lose its No. 1 spot [on the FM ladder] in Sydney if Kyle quits or gets the boot, and that could create all kinds of problems. But you have to look at the bigger picture: we were locked into a $200 million contract that was effectively an albatross around the company’s neck.
“This is a chance for a fresh start: it could be a financial reset, and it gives us the opportunity to reclaim some of the listeners we lost in Melbourne. Other companies have tried to network breakfast radio shows across different cities before, and it’s never really worked. This is further proof that radio – especially in the crucial breakfast hours, where you make most of your money – needs to be local.”
Another ARN employee, who is not based in the company’s Sydney headquarters, said the impact of the job cuts was being felt “in every ARN office around the country”.
“It’s noticeably emptier in here,” the employee said, requesting that their working location be withheld to reduce the risk of being identified by management. “There are less sales staff, less experienced producers – some of them got the chop because they were highly paid, which meant we lost a lot of talent and institutional knowledge – and just less people overall. You come in every day and see these empty desks, and it’s so disheartening.”
The trigger for the bust-up between Sandilands and Henderson occurred during a live broadcast on February 20, sparked by a discussion about astrology – prompting Sandilands to question the work ethic of his co-host.
“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 said in response to Henderson dissecting the “birth chart” of the disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew.
Henderson decided to take a week off to “gather her thoughts”, but did not return on Monday as expected.
ARN was forced to employ additional censors after the Kyle & Jackie O show violated the industry’s decency codes a dozen times in 2025.
Last year, Sandilands told listeners he would not placate the program’s Melbourne audience. “We’re not just going to suck Melbourne off all day, every day,” he said, declaring he’d rather remove his show from the city entirely than tone down his controversial broadcasting style.
The pair, who began working together in 1999, are no strangers to controversy. When they were employed by rival network Austereo (now known as Southern Cross Austereo), they aired a stunt in which a 14-year-old girl was attached to a lie detector before being quizzed about her sexual history, leading her divulge she had been raped when she was 12.
They also told a Cambodian-Australian woman they would bring her niece to Australia, only to reveal she would be put behind one of three doors – and if the woman failed to pick the right door, her niece would be sent home. After the woman chose the wrong door, she cried and begged until the hosts revealed her niece could stay.
Sandilands had previously drawn criticism after suggesting that beloved performer Magda Szubanski be placed in a concentration camp to lose weight; calling a journalist a “fat slag” before threatening to “hunt her down”; and making fun of a disabled baby.
Last week, Sandilands rubbished reports that the Kyle & Jackie O show was coming to an end. “It just goes to show you can never believe what you read in any of the newspapers,” he said.
Among the songs played on Wednesday’s broadcast were Survivor by Destiny’s Child; Anti-Hero by Taylor Swift (“I get older but just never wiser … I should not be left to my own devices … one day, I’ll watch as you’re leaving, ’cause you got tired of my scheming”); I Run by Haven (“Come in closer, know that I’m a mess, tangled up in wires, I can’t catch my breath”) and How You Remind Me by Nickelback (“Never made it as a wise man … this is how you remind me of what I really am … this time I’m mistaken”).
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Michael Lallo is a senior culture writer at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.
