Remember that time they aired audio recordings of their staff pissing? High quality content that will surely be missed.
Australian radio waves can finally be spared of the tyranny of Kyle and Jackie-O, the shock-jock radio duo known for outrageous stunts, constant vulgarity and a $200 Million pay packet.
Building a career off of being offensive is no easy feat, but Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson made it look natural. Probably because it was.
There was that time that Sandilands grilled a teenager hooked up to a lie-detector about her sexual assault, whilst Henderson watched on.
Or that time they placed secret microphones in the staff toilets and tried to guess the person’s gender from audio of them urinating.
Each stunt earned them another slap on the wrist from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), sometimes being pulled from the air, but the pair were never far from the mic.
Their unpredictability grew to such extremes that a 30-second delay was imposed on the program, as opposed to the standard 10-second delay for live broadcasts.
Regardless of their incessant controversies, in 2023 ARN Media offered them a 10-year contract of $10 million-a-year each.
So when Jackie-O began discussing former Prince Andrew’s horoscopes, Kyle dug into her, calling her “unfocused” and “off with the fairies.”
Kyle acted his usual, misogynistic self. After all, it had already gotten him $100 Million, so why stop?
Jackie-O called it an “attack,” fighting away tears live on air.
It could’ve been great scripted publicity. But ARN Media announced yesterday Henderson’s resignation from the show, refusing to work with Sandilands for the indefinite future.
A sigh of relief amongst the Australian populace, but perhaps, too for ARN Media.
The announcement was released on the ASX, worth noting as a curious place for a media announcement. Since the lucrative Kyle and Jackie-O deal, ARN Media’s profits have been in a state of decline.
In 2025, the company reported that net profits dropped by 68%, CEO Michael Stephenson blamed the fall on 2025 being a transitional year.
But advertisers had steadily been pulling out or boycotting the show entirely, ultimately leaving ARN high and dry, faced with maintaining the most lucrative radio deal in decades for at least another 7 years.
Jackie-O’s departure may be abrupt, but the writing was on the wall to get out. It’s no wonder she has been quietly building a multi-million dollar property empire.
Did she foresee the slow death of the shock jock presenter? Titans of the genre such as Alan Jones and Ray Hadley are retiring and fading from the spotlight (or in the case of Alan Jones, awaiting a court date), whilst Howard Stern maintains a small 3-year contract and wanes in relevance.
ARN Media assumed radio could be revitalised by allowing sporadic headlines and viral audio bites to drive interest, but clearly failed to realise the hurt and ultimate fall-out from these stunts would drive business into the ground.
Now the question becomes, does the death of Kyle and Jackie-O herald a new era for radio, one with integrity and, perhaps, quality?
