Kyle & Jackie O continue ratings nosedive

BY NATHAN JOLLY for MUMBRELLA with ASHLEY GEELAN

Jackie Henderson [“Jackie O“] was the final speaker at Commercial Radio & Audio’s HEARD conference, held on Tuesday afternoon in Sydney.

Henderson addressed the elephant in the room after about 15 minutes of soft-ball non- questions about writing a book.

“We launched into Melbourne obviously and it didn’t go gangbusters straight away,” Henderson began.

“And, I think people are nervous to ask about that because maybe they associate that with a loss of pride or something, I don’t know – I’m not afraid to talk about that.”

For the uninitiated, the Kyle and Jackie O show swaggered into the Melbourne breakfast market last April, with a multi-million-dollar launch campaign and plenty of tasteless stunts.

One example was sending a Barbie-pink K+J van to Nova’s Jase and Lauren radio event weeks after taking their KIIS101.1 breakfast slot away from them.

This year they had their tennis ball stunt for “dropping balls” which, although being promoted as ‘tennis balls being dropped from a helicopter’ was changed to foam balls, or aviation authorities would not have allowed the promotion to proceed.

This stunt was a blatant attempt at grabbing ratings for their ever-dwindling KIISFM (3TT) Melbourne breakfast show after spending last year on air talking about women’s breasts and vaginas and men’s testicles and penises.

Wherever Kyle Sandilands and Jackie could sink into the gutter on air, they both sank well past the gutter and into the drain pipe on a regular – almost daily – basis.

The first full ratings book they were on air saw them take a 6.1% share, which dropped to 5.2% the following survey. 

By the end of 2024, they held a 5% share and were the eighth-biggest show in their timeslot – just 0.7% higher than narrowly focussed SEN’s sports breakfast show.

“I think in a weird way Melbourne not being a success instantly is a good thing for us,” Henderson reasons.

“We’ve been doing breakfast for more than 20 years, and there have been times where the show has inevitably gone off track a little bit, because each day you kind of do things, you might push boundaries or test the limits and before you know it, you’re kind of over here,” she gestured with her arm, “when the essence of what people love is here. And you’ve gone over here too much.”

The boundary-pushing hasn’t gone unnoticed.

During a senate hearing last November, Green’s Senator Hanson-Young asked the communications watchdog why they hadn’t acted on any of the 59 complaints they’d received since July that year about Sandilands and Henderson (Jackie O).

Hanson Young questioned how content broadcast between 6am and 10am dealt with “jokes about people being gay, jokes about one of the producer’s Asian housemate, jokes about dating men who are not quote ‘white’, jokes about the sexual and racial profiles of other journalists from other stations, divisive and violent language about women and sex, vulgar detail about sex acts, comments on air that refer to fellow hosts as being ‘annoying bitch’ and ‘ho’, jokes about overweight women and mental health, and of course, the final point there about a competition where they got female staff to record themselves urinating, and then the boys had to figure out whose bits were contributing to that urine”.

It was quite the diatribe.

A week later, Australian Radio Network’s (ARN) then-chief content officer Duncan Campbell told Mumbrella that Sandilands had agreed to tone back what he called “the graphic sexual content” to “win the Melbourne audience.”

Henderson admits that when the show first launched in Melbourne, they pushed the boundaries further.

“And by it not being a success straight away, it humbled us and it made us go, ‘Have we lost our way?’ It really made us reassess where we’re at, what we’re doing with the show, and, you know, do a reset.”

Henderson said the toned-down show is “sounding better than it has in a long time.”

“I really think we’ve got our groove back” she continued, “and I can feel it when I know when we’re on track and doing the things that make Kyle and I do great radio. You know, that smut has really been taken away and it’s just good. The chemistry, that’s where we excel, Kyle and I, we have really good chemistry and when we just talk shit, it’s good, you know, it’s entertaining, we don’t need any of that other stuff.”

Henderson and Sandilands are both resigned to Melbourne being a slow burn rather than the explosion they expected. “It got a lot of press and so they tuned in and they heard really fucked up shit we shouldn’t have been talking about,” she admits.

“And I cringe when I think, but anyway, it is what it is, it’s done. And now we have to rely on those people to re-tune in and give it a second chance.”

Henderson believes word-of-mouth will be how they find a Melbourne audience. “But, that will take time and that’s okay, you know, it’s totally fine,” she reasons. “I guess, when you’re tested, you then get taught something from that. I see that as a blessing in disguise.”

And, if word-of-mouth doesn’t work, Henderson reveals Sandilands has plans to buy a house in Melbourne and spend more time in the city.

“Melbourne like[s] to feel like they’re just not some afterthought,” Henderson said.  “And rightly so.”

The Kyle and Jackie O show in Melbourne suffered a massive ratings slump last year.

Read the original here.