ARN should be praying this Kyle and Jackie O rift is permanent
Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson (pictured) had what could be a multi-million-dollar falling out on Friday -- and ARN may not be that concerned (Kiis)
The Kyle and Jackie O show is currently in a holding pattern.
After an on-air spat during Friday’s show about her perceived lack of professionalism, Jackie ‘O’ Henderson has taken the entire week off, leaving Sandilands to offer brief updates on her status with the show.
The five-minute argument stemmed from Henderson reading Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s star chart on her phone during a segment, leading Sandilands to accuse her of derailing the program by being “off with the fairies”.
He claimed she wasn’t fulfilling her role, and that “everyone in this building has mentioned it to me … everyone you can see has said something over the last month at some stage.”
The incredibly awkward argument had the cadence of a public lovers’ spat, with angry recriminations, Henderson teetering close to tears as she accused Sandilands of being unfair, and both parties dragging producers and newsreaders into the fray to back them up. The entire segment was removed from the podcast version of the show.
During Monday’s show, Sandilands said, “you might notice Jackie is not here. I spoke with her yesterday. She wants a couple of days off to gather her thoughts.” Sandilands added that the pair had only communicated via text message since the falling out.
On Tuesday morning, Sandilands said he “just heard” that Henderson would be back next week, before producers played an old clip of the pair. When newsreader Brooklyn Ross said he missed her, Sandilands interjected with: “She’ll be gone for the week, so looking forward to her returning.”
This rift could be a blessing in disguise for ARN. It is just one year into a ten-year, $200 million deal with the pair, a deal that Sandilands admits the network was strongarmed into, after rival network SCA came after the pair in 2023 with a big offer.
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During a November 2025 show, Sandilands outlined the situation that saw the pair become the highest paid radio presenters in Australian broadcast history.
“So, it was the perfect storm. We were coming up to a contract deal here,” he said.
“The old radio station [2DayFM] let’s say the ex-girlfriend, rang up … they offered us a lot of money to come back to the old network.
“Then we, being good staff members here at Kiis, ran straight to our boss. ‘Oh boss. They’ve offered us 10 years and $100 million to go back. And that’d be like rooting an ex-girlfriend and we’d rather stay here rooting you guys, but you’re gonna have to pay. Them the rules’. And then they didn’t like it and had to pay anyway.
“So are we worth it? No. Was it the perfect storm? Yeah. And that’s how it is.”
Later in the same segment, Sandilands looped back around to the topic of their pay.
“You’ll read some articles like saying ‘ARN’s made a terrible decision’. No, no, no. They had no choice [but] to make that decision or we would’ve gone back to the other network.”
He also said that if they didn’t go back to SCA, the pair would have gone to the AM stations (presumably Nine’s talkback stable) or “if it wasn’t the AMs, we’d be off doing our own podcast.”
The heat has faded somewhat since the pair signed the historic contract in late 2023.
At the time they had held the FM breakfast crown in Sydney since their first survey for Kiis in 2014 — an unbeaten streak that still holds. It was assumed this success was replicable in other markets, a factor that no doubt impacted the size and length of their contracts. This theory that hasn’t held water to date.
The Kyle and Jackie O show launched into Melbourne breakfast in April 2024, with a 5.1% share of the audience for their first survey. At the end of 2025, they held a 5% share, sixth in FM and eighth across all breakfast radio in the city. What other radio show in a major market gets such a generous grace period when ratings continue to be so terrible?
Sandilands feels this lack of success is a failure of management.
“I blame you guys,” he told ARN’s then-CEO Ciaran Davis last June, during the IMAA Sound Byte conference.
“What we should have done is rolled us out nationally from day one, put our balls in our hand, and fucking moved forward. None of this, ‘Oh, put your little toe in the water’. ‘Oh, we’re going to rebrand Gold, so let’s not use the marketing money to tell everyone that they’re on.’
“It’s just a disaster.”
Kyle and Jackie O on stage at ARN’s upfront in 2025 (Mumbrella)
Another concern is Sandilands’ health. In February 2025, he announced on air that he was to undergo surgery for a brain aneurysm, telling listeners that “a life of cocaine abuse and partying are not the way to go”.
Henderson previously battled an addiction to prescription drugs, which no doubt made Sandilands’ declaration during Friday’s argument that she was acting “like a drug addict” sting a little more.
There’s also a current battle with communications watchdog ACMA, which announced in November 2025 it was looking to impose a new licence condition that will ban the Kyle and Jackie O Show from using sexual references.
This proposed condition — which ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin claimed was weeks away from being finalised during a Senate estimates grilling on February 10 — would seriously hamper the pair’s on-air appeal if they chose to take it seriously.
The condition would theoretically restrict the Kyle and Jackie O Show — plus any show on the network the pair appear on — from making any sexual references, which would “include spoken words, innuendo and/or sound effects that would be understood by the ordinary reasonable listener as having a sexual meaning.”
That’s a lot of scope for a breach, and the condition would last for five years — or until year eight of their contract. It would require ARN to police the pair, on fear of suspension or cancellation of licenses.
ACMA has so far been unable to control the content of the show, despite the pair racking up 12 license breaches during 2025. Although O’Loughlin said in Senate that ARN risks losing its licenses should the upcoming conditions be breached, she also admitted this has never occurred.
Under the current laws, any breach of an additional licence condition can lead to remedial directions which, if also breached, will allow ACMA to seek an order from the Federal Court to impose either civil penalties, or a licence suspension.
The highest-rating FM breakfast in the biggest market in the country, featuring the two highest-paid stars in the history of radio, is unlikely to be used as a test case for this convoluted path to censorship.
Still, ARN is taking the threat with at least a mild sense of alarm, if only to appease advertisers who may have cold feet.
The Kyle and Jackie O Show debuted in 2004
A few weeks after the ACMA threat, the network advertised for a new senior content advisor for the show, who would lead an entire team dedicated to “monitoring live and recorded audio to ensure all content meets broadcast standards” and “identifying and managing potential risks in content, ensuring compliance with Commercial Radio Codes of Practice.”
It’s unlikely that Sandilands will allow a content advisor — senior or otherwise — to dictate terms regarding what he can or cannot say on air.
Last year, the pair dodged contempt of court charges over on-air comments made about the Erin Patterson mushroom case. A month later, when discussing an alleged murder, the show was taken off air mid-segment by producers, for fear of another breach (the show operates on a seven-second delay).
Sandilands stormed off, threatening not to return for a week. He was back on air the next morning, but doubled down on his disdain for contempt of court laws.
“Some laws are just so dumb and stupid, and I’m not playing ball,” he said.
“Until this show runs the way I intend it to be run, I will not be back on the air at all, in any way, shape or form. I’m not going to waste my life here walking on eggshells around other people’s ideas of what I should be doing.
“I do what I want to do – and if you don’t like it, tough shit. That’s the way it is with me.”
Sandilands declared he’d “rather be raped in jail then be puppeteered by losers”.
“Judges can shove it in their arses, ACMA can shove it in their arses, and so can the management of the radio station.”
It’s highly likely that Kyle and Jackie O will be back on air together next Monday, making crude jokes, bullying producers, and acting like this is just another road bump, which it most likely is.
It’s also very likely that at least one ARN executive has looked at the current situation, then at the Melbourne ratings, the pending license conditions, and a future with two volatile employees on $10m a year until 2034 — and thought that maybe a permanent bust-up might not be such a bad thing after all.
CORRECTION: This story originally stated that Sandilands and Henderson were two years into their current ARN deal. In fact, the new contract began in January 2025.
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we can only hope its the end but unlikely. oh to dream. he could then go run as a one nation candidate and hopefully fade into obscurity / a stefanovic style podcast for tradies on ice
We are watching in real time a slow motion train crash.
And it’s all of their own doing.
It feels too much like a manufactured event to try and save their abysmal Melbourne ratings.