You may have seen some headlines this week about Jackie O – the highest paid female radio star in Australia. Just one year into a 10-year contract worth AU$100 million (yes, $10 million a year – roughly $40,000 a day), she has walked out. So what’s the story? For 25 years she’s been on-air opposite shock jock Kyle Sandilands. And it seems this week, she had enough of his cruel, belittling comments…
The shock announcement of the end of KIIS FM’s The Kyle & Jackie O Show in Australia on Tuesday left both fans and industry insiders blindsided.
Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson are one of the longest-running media partnerships in the country – and their highest-paid.
But just one year into a AU$200 million 10-year contract with Australian Radio Network (ARN) things have come to a crashing halt, ending 25 years on-air together.
What started as fight over astrology on February 20 led to Jackie O saying she could no longer work with her long-time co-host and Kyle being suspended for two weeks over his behaviour, which ARN labelled “an act of serious misconduct” and a breach of contract.
Here’s how it unfolded:
“Ms Jacqueline Henderson has given notice that she ‘cannot continue to work with Mr Kyle Sandilands’,” ARN said in a statement issued on Tuesday afternoon.
They added the show will be taken off-air immediately, while Kyle has “14 days to remedy this breach” otherwise his contract will be terminated.
Media expert Tim Burrowes, who labelled the pair “arguably Australia’s most famous and possibly most successful radio show of all time” said news of them hanging up their headphones after a 25-year partnership sent shockwaves through the entire industry.
The Age‘s special correspondent Stephen Brook agreed, calling it “the biggest, most consequential bust-up in Australian media – ever”.
Facebook: The Kyle and Jackie O Show
How it all started
What started as a youth-focused late night radio show in 2000 quickly catapulted Kyle and Jackie O into Aussie radio stars.
Kyle took over from Ugly Phil (real name Phil O’Neil), who was not only Jackie O’s on-air partner but her off-air partner as well, shortening her name so fans may not as easily put it together.
Following the couple’s divorce, Phil moved to the UK leaving Jackie O in need of a new shock jock partner, which ended up being Kyle.
Their on-air rapport and fast-growing fanbase saw them promoted from 2Day FM’s Hot 30 Countdown to the drive-time slot in Sydney and Melbourne in 2004 and the following year to the highly coveted Sydney breakfast radio slot.
Their top-rated show was said to be generating about $30 million a year in advertising revenue for Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), with ARN later stealing them away in 2014 with a massive deal.
It’s understood SCA was offering the duo a generous package to bring them – and their audience – back to the network.
So ARN came in with a landmark $10 million a year for each of them over 10 years, adding up to the $200 million contract we know of today.
Over their career together, the pair have won the Australian Commercial Radio Awards Best On-Air Team (Metro FM) a record eight times and they were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2022.
When it unravelled
The show’s not been without its controversies over the years but even then, fans have been left shocked it’s come to this.
However, some industry insiders believed the writing was on the wall for some time.
“This clearly has been a long time coming,” advertising executive Ben Willee told Burrowes on an emergency podcast episode of Mumbrellacast.
“You don’t walk away from the biggest deal in Australian media without something bubbling along the way.”
The pair, who co-hosted Big Brother together on TV in addition to their radio show in 2008, have seen each other through a range or personal and professional highs and lows – weddings, babies, divorces, successes and failures.
Perhaps prophetically, Jackie O told Kyle during a 2020 interview for 60 Minutes, “I’m always worried you’re going to say something that will one day just ruin you”.
Kyle, in the same interview, put down their success to the fact that they balance each other out, both on-air and off, saying, “it’s a Ying and a Yang”.
But it was their move into the Melbourne breakfast slot as a syndicated show in 2024 that might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back after years of on-air tiffs that often appeared akin to sibling rivalry.
After dominating the airwaves in Sydney for decades, taking the top spot in consecutive FM radio surveys, they had the sucker punch of coming in sixth place in Melbourne at the end of their first year.
“Many will see the Sydney program’s expansion into Melbourne two years ago as the beginning of the end for the show,” Stephen Brook noted.
The slot shed 140,000 listeners as Victorians turned off in protest, after local KIIS FM show Jase & Lauren (hosted by Jason Hawkins and Lauren Phillips with newsreader Clint Stanaway) was axed to make way for the Sydney-based duo.
Stephen previously summarised “the program’s impact on Melbourne as though a spaceship from Planet Porno attempted to crash through ingrained media parochialism, but instead it just crashed”.
“Ratings were abysmal and Melbourne celebrated its wholehearted rejection of the brash Sydneysiders in much the same way it celebrates the Sydney Swans losing an AFL grand final,” he added.
It’s believed the pressure on the pair to perform in this situation may have led to the first cracks in their decades-long partnership.
During an interview at an industry event last year, Jackie gave the first hint that something could be stirring behind the scenes.
The popular presenter admitted she would walk away from the show if she needed to, despite their freshly signed contract.
“I don’t ever wanna feel bound by this contract where I’m driven by money,” she said at Radiodays Europe 2025.
“I’ve never been driven by money in my career, and I always want to stay true to that.
“So if it doesn’t feel right at any stage, I would be prepared to walk away from that.”
Just two days before their final on-air blow-up, Kyle gave a somewhat backhanded compliment to his co-host on podcast The Karl Stefanovic Show.
“Jackie is such a chameleon, over the years, it feels like I’ve worked with 30-60 different personalities,” he said.
“As much as I love her, that’s one crazy woman, every six weeks she’s a completely different personality.
“I would do anything for Jackie, it’s probably – apart from my wife and child – the most significant relationship I’ve ever had, especially when it comes to longevity.”
Kyle said the secret to their success is because he ultimately respects her.
“I actually respect what she’s got to say even though I may combatively play with her emotions,” he told Karl.
“Even if I disagree with what she’s saying … even though I dismiss a lot of it as nonsense and hocus pocus and woo-woo.”
Then, Kyle did just that to Jackie O on-air, questioning her work ethic and teasing her “obsession” with astrology, leading to her walking out of the studio for the final time.
He later apologised on-air for the strong criticism, labelled by some as bullying, but the damage had been done.
Jackie O was absent from the airwaves for a week before her shock departure from the show was announced.
Where to next?
Time will tell if Kyle manages to remedy the situation he currently faces but it would not be the first time he has gotten himself out of hot water.
There’s every chance if he smooths things over with management he could continue to host solo, as a lot of AM presenters tend to do, or he could have a revolving door of co-hosts on different days of the week.
Perhaps the front-runner to fill Jackie O’s seat would be Kyle’s friend and former drive radio personality Sophie Monk.
The Love Island host is currently filling in on KIIS FM’s drivetime show Will & Woody, while Will McMahon is on paternity leave.
For her part, Jackie O has been offered another show by ARN but it’s not yet known if she’s taken up the offer or what that show might look like.
Willee believes ARN might bring in former Sydney Gold FM breakfast radio duo Jonesy & Amanda (Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller), who had just moved to a national drive-time slot.
He thinks their Gold FM breakfast replacement – a national show featuring British radio host Christian O’Connell, who had a decent Melbourne audience and is building a Sydney presence – could be pulled over to KIIS FM.
But regardless of the short-term implications of yesterday’s announcement, “there’s a lot more to play out on this,” he said.
This article was reproduced with permission from 9Honey. To read the original article, click here.