[ad_1]
Updated ,first published
KIIS FM has terminated Jackie “O” Henderson’s $100 million contract after she told executives she “cannot continue to work with Mr Kyle Sandilands” following an on-air feud with her co-star.
The decision, announced on the ASX late on Tuesday by KIIS’s parent company, ARN, said Henderson would no longer present The Kyle and Jackie O Show, which is in just the second year of a 10-year, $200 million contract signed in 2023.
Her controversial colleague Sandilands has been suspended for two weeks because of his “serious misconduct” and will have to show he has fixed his contractual breach or have his own contract torn up by ARN as well.
Henderson has been off-air after Sandilands berated her during a live broadcast on February 20, criticising her work ethic because she had looked into horoscopes during a discussion on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, which he said was part of a wider pattern.
“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 told Henderson during the show as she fought back tears.
Henderson has been offered an alternative show on KIIS. Tuesday’s announcement came with nine years left to run on the duo’s record-breaking contract. The major outlay, $20 million a year, became a drag on the company’s earnings amid the show’s middling performance in Melbourne.
Henderson had been expected to return to the highest-paid radio show in the country on Monday, but Sandilands told listeners she would not be on air for the second week in a row.
On Tuesday morning, Sandilands said Henderson’s camp was preparing a statement that would say she was “returning in the future”, though he did not give any further details about when that would be, or in what capacity.
“It’s a tender situation here with the Jackie situation. And it’s sort of out of my hands, even though I lit the match,” Sandilands said at the beginning of Tuesday’s show.
“I signed off yesterday on some sort of a statement from Jackie’s camp and at the end I noticed, this is the only thing I really noticed, that Jackie will be returning in the future.”
“That was a good sign. So the intention is to come back, which is fabulous.”
The pair have, by some distance, the most lucrative contract in Australian media. It was designed to reflect the pair’s growing dominance in Sydney and planned expansion to other key metropolitan markets, such as Melbourne and Brisbane.
The show launched into Melbourne two years ago, but it has floundered in the city. In the breakfast slot, which traditionally demands more advertising revenue than any other time of day, KIIS has lost more than 220,000 listeners under Sandilands and Henderson, or 36 per cent of its audience.
Hundreds of staff have been made redundant by KIIS’s owner, ARN, over the two years since the contract was signed, and there were more job cuts this week, this masthead has confirmed. ARN declined to comment.
Last year, ARN was forced to rethink its approach to the Kyle and Jackie O Show national rollout, which was part of the contract the pair signed running until 2034. It has been forced to deploy additional censors on the show after breaches of industry codes relating to decency 12 times in 2025 alone.
Poor ratings have been compounded by a prolonged campaign by activist group Mad F—ing Witches, which has resulted in falling metro advertising revenue and lost ground to its main competitors, Nova and Southern Cross Austereo.
In Brisbane, the network brought back the previously dumped breakfast trio Robin, Kip & Corey for 2026, and it has also hired former Nova and triple j personalities Ben Harvey and Liam Stapleton to start in Adelaide next month. Sandilands and Henderson do not broadcast in those markets.
In the company’s full-year results released last week, ARN said KIIS’s performance suffered from “heightened advertiser sensitivity to brand safety” impacting revenue. ARN’s metro revenue across both of its networks, KIIS and Gold, declined by 16 per cent, or $28.3 million.
Last month, The Kyle and Jackie O Show dropped to a 5 per cent share in the eighth and final radio ratings survey of the year for Melbourne. It remains one of the top shows in Sydney, but its share has suffered somewhat during the same period, as have total listeners to the show.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.
Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.From our partners
[ad_2]
