It’s the wildest week Australian radio has ever seen, but the end of The Kyle & Jackie O Show is only the start
The most successful radio partnership of all time came to a shocking end last night with the exit of Jackie Henderson from the Kyle and Jackie O Show. Cohost Kyle Sandilands has been suspended and may never return. Tim Burrowes believes the legal, commercial and programming implications will reverberate for years.
It turns out that even millionaire radio hosts can be unhappy.
Or perhaps, especially millionaire radio hosts can be unhappy.
Imagine winning the financial independence of a $10m per year contract. But the price to pay is getting out of bed while the rest of the world is asleep, and then spending four or five hours in a studio with somebody you no longer have much in common with. Every single day until you turn 60. Something like 10,000 hours of your life.
This week, Jackie Henderson decided she did not want to pay the price. What’s the point in having the money if you can’t live your life? So she has walked away from (some of) the money.
Things that can all be true at the same time …
1. Sandilands is a known bully and bullied his colleague on air.
2. Henderson enabled his bullying behaviour for decades.
3. A cavalcade of radio execs and advertisers enabled his behaviour for decades.
4. Sandilands and Henderson were co-workers but never “equals”.
5. He bullied, belittled and undermined her publically, claiming “all” her colleagues thought she was doing a bad job, while on air, raising all sorts of workplace safety red flags and psychosocial issues.
6. ARN’s current CEO only recently jumped ship from Nine’s workplace safety firestorm.
7. All parties wanted a way out of that contract.
They were completely out of sync with modern Australian attitudes, where the spotlight is on bullying, rampant domestic violence and ‘jokey’ misogyny being rejected by Gen Z. They were both as bad as each other.
Why would anyone in their right mind invest money in the Kyle & Jackie ‘O Show in the first place? It was only two years ago. Will the board step down? Kyle would easily sue ARN on this one.
Where is Hamish McLennan and the board on this disaster? The mastermind of this deal.
is he going to step down?
Tim stop being such a fanboy. It’s embarrassing. Call them out for what they were. A failure in Melbourne dogged by smut and controversy.
Incredible insight into her character, or lack of it, that the final straw was not years of on-air bullying and vile behaviour directed at all manner of other, often vulnerable people — but some fairly mild piss-taking about her penchant for astrology. A degree of narcissism that needs its own chapter in the medical textbooks. Good riddance to her, and hopefully to him.
he will be on sky news before q3
It’s surely misconduct to give confronting serious feedback to your equal at work, in front of everyone in the office and in front of your millions of customers?
Excellent article Tim.
This definitely wasn’t bullying and I’d wager a fair bet that most social media commenters aren’t listeners of the show.
In my opinion Jackie has been not been herself since returning in 2026 and this was pretty clear listening every day.
People can say what they like about Kyle’s personality flaws but he was, and is, a brilliant “radio person” that totally gets the game and any solo show he does will be very successful. Whenever he was missing on one of his “sick days”, the quality of the show with Jackie and Cooper Johns for example was many levels below Kyle hosting with Brooklyn Ross.
Will be interesting to see what unfolds in the next few weeks.
It’ll be interesting to see how much of the ~$155M remaining on that $200M deal ARN can actually recover. If Jackie has exited citing bullying or an unsafe workplace, you’d assume there was a decent settlement involved. On the other side, if Kyle doesn’t get what he believes he’s owed from the remaining years of the deal, it’s hard to see him not lawyering up, which could become expensive for ARN in its own right. In hindsight the contract always looked like a massive bet from the ARN C-suite, and depending on how the termination clauses play out this could leave the network in a worse position than before. And if that’s the case, what budget is actually left to fund replacement talent/show?
I cannot wait for the first Dave Cameron interview. What a first week.
Why do you fail to mention that Ben Fordham has had more survey wins that this so called “successful” duo ?