Will new CEO and ARN board survive Kyle and Jackie O car crash?

Last November Mumbrella carried a piece headlined “Buckle up: Stephenson’s ARN is going to be a wild ride”.

It was the first piece I wrote for Mumbrella, and I revisited it a few weeks later after some surprising management decisions then new chief executive Michael Stephenson had made.

Some people I spoke to thought the forensic examination of the TV sales executive turned radio chief was too harsh. Since then — despite the Christmas break — the ride has only been getting wilder.

Stephenson had inherited an ARN roadmap that former chief executive Ciaran Davis drew up with the support of the board chaired by Hamish McLennan.

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The final months of the Davis years at ARN had been a wild ride too. The over-ambitious play to swap the Gold brand for Triple M, and merging iHeart with Listnr, never looked like getting up, and indeed it didn’t.

Connected to that overreach was the massive contract ARN signed to keep Kyle Sandilands, Jackie Henderson and Christian O’Connell part of the family.

It has been widely reported the Sydney-based hosts each signed on for a decade at $10m each annually, while O’Connell saw his annual compensation jump to an estimated $5m.

To make those figures work ARN had to spread the announcers across Australia’s two biggest radio markets initially, and then beyond into national programs.

Stephenson’s honeymoon period, if he ever had one, is well and truly over. From the day of the ARN upfront late last year, he was calling the shots while Davis was watching from the wings on his way to the exit.

As Mumbrella noted just last week, the ARN full year financials were not pretty.

EBITDA was down 23% to $43.5m YOY while net profit after tax was just $16m, down 40%. And here was a company paying three of its employees an estimated $25m a year.

Some think it surprising that the board signed off on the last couple of years of the Davis strategy. In an exit interview I conducted with departing former ARN head of content Duncan Campbell last year I asked him about the massive Sandilands and Henderson contract. Campbell made it plain that it was all the work of Davis and his chairman McLennan.

The board sitting alongside the chairman don’t have metro commercial radio backgrounds, although they bring other skills for their $150,000 plus annual salaries. The four other board members are Alison Cameron, Paul Connolly, Brent Cubis and Belinda Rowe.

After a number of backflips and interviews that didn’t go well, Stephenson and his executive team may be understandably gun shy about talking to media.

The company will now make a fresh start. Finding a national commercial breakfast radio show remains as big a challenge as it has ever been. Feeling the pressure now more than he might have previously is Christian O’Connell at Gold. With the Kiis network on fire, all eyes will be on Gold.

Broadcaster chooses team Jackie

Reading between the lines of the ARN release, it seems the company has chosen Team Henderson.

In the first paragraph of the ASX said it had “offered to Ms Henderson the possibility of an alternative show”. It is too premature for any talks about what that might look like, but it seems possible we will hear her on air at Kiis again while it could be curtains for Sandilands.

In a statement that was dripping in legalese, it appears Sandilands is being given a chance to continue on the breakfast show. But how that might be possible after Henderson claimed she “cannot continue to work” with her on air partner in unclear. Others have spoken about allegations of bullying and an unsafe workplace.

How Sandilands could “remedy” what ARN claims is a “serious breach of ARN’s service agreement”? If that doesn’t happen “Mr Sandilands will cease to present The Kyle and Jackie O Show.” The program has now been blown up, and it’s clear it will never return.

A history of turmoil

The Jackie walkout initially looked like it might be a temporary blow up. A key ingredient of The Kyle and Jackie radio product had been a raw and no-holds-barred reveal of what goes on behind the scenes. Listeners got to hear everything that went down, or most of it.

There have been plenty of blow-ups in the past.

Listeners with long memories will remember what some think were the golden days of The Kyle and Jackie Show — its first decade on breakfast — when Jason Hawkins and newsreader Geoff Field were part of the team.

After Sandilands mentioned Field in a podcast with me back in 2010, and following an awkward appearance with Sandilands and Henderson at a 2Day FM industry showcase, Field disappeared from the show. He continued as a newsreader for the broadcaster for a number of years, including on the Hamish and Andry drive show.

Geoff Field has never publicly discussed what went down but Mumbrella subsequently wrote about “allegations of bullying’. He continues to maintain a dignified silence and lives with his husband Jason in North Queensland.

Field stayed with 2Day FM for a number of years as Sydney newsreader for Hamish and Andy on their drive show.

Hawkins left Kyle and Jackie O and has had an impressive radio career since.

He doesn’t dwell on any scars from his days with Kyle and Jackie O, although he did tell Fiona Byrne in one of her last interviews at the Herald Sun before she left for The Age:

“I’ve done some pretty immature stunts and agreed to broadcast from some silly places, but I’ve learnt to push back and ask for things that feel more authentic to me.”

Many of those “immature stunts” were done with Geoff Field.

Kyle and Jackie O make it in Melbourne

It is an irony that will not be lost on all involved that the day the radio show really made an impact in Melbourne was for the coverage Australia’s biggest-selling newspaper gave to the program’s obituary.

Kyle and Jackie O managed to push the war with Iran off the front page with its Kyle and Jackie Woe front page.

ARN: Sifting through the ashes

Looking at the ARN investor presentation that accompanied its full year results you wonder if they knew this car crash might be coming.

The stark results aren’t accompanied by a single photo of any talent on the books. The results presentation is usually a PDF document full of photos of the stars of the network – in recent years that meant photos of Kyle, Jackie, Jonesy, Amanda, Christian, Will and Woody plus whoever was hosting the stations in Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.

This year the only images in the document were of CEO Stephenson and his executive team.

Dave Cameron’s best decision two days in

The only executive not pictured in the investor presentation was new chief content officer Dave Cameron.

When he signed on last year ahead of his arrival he could not have imagined the challenge he would be faced with in his first week.

When a new C-suite executive arrives at a network one his first roles is to take a new photo. Cameron has had to delay a trip to the photo studio for a few days!

It’s early days yet of course in a post Kyle and Jackie O world, but his initial move seems the right one.

Greeting the Kyle and Jackie O audience this morning was Kent Small. He too would never have imagined after his Nova career wrapped at the end of 2025 that he would soon be, albeit temporarily, hosting the most talked-about radio show ever in Australia.

Smallzy sounded great on day one and suitably humble, which was the right tone after the rule of the Donald Trump of the airwaves has come to an end.

Smallzy just needs to stop talking about how he is the temporary replacement after today … just in case.