KIIS experiment takes a bite out of ARN bottom line as worried advertisers flee program
An advertiser boycott group claims its 900th withdrawal from Kyle & Jackie O show as shareholders grow uncertain.
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An advertiser boycott targeting the Kyle and Jackie O breakfast show has taken a massive potential multi-million bite out of the duo’s revenue takings at KIIS FM.
Industry sources have told News.com.au radio bosses at KIIS’s parent company ARN are fast losing faith in the bold and expensive experiment that saw the famously lewd and crude Sydney breakfast duo, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson, broadcast to the conservative family-oriented Melbourne market to humbling ratings from January 2024.
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Shareholders too are struggling to come to terms with what now appears to have been a miscalculation on the part of the ARN executive team led by CEO Ciaran Davis who, industry stalwarts claim, has effectively handed the keys to radio network to an intractable Sandilands, from whom they licence the controversial breakfast show.
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As Sandilands reluctantly put his hand up at the weekend for “probably” some of the blame concerning his program’s poor Melbourne results, and in the same interview bullishly declared that “if (ARN) want to cancel the show, they have to pay out”, ARN’s share price touched down after a decade-long slide to a low of 56c.
The result is roughly 90 per cent lower than its 2015 peak of $5.42, a high achieved the year after Davis engineered the radio duo’s leap from rival network SCA.
Industry insiders say the fears of worried advertisers, who have abandoned the radio show in the hundreds thanks to a damaging advertiser boycott, have now gripped radio company executives who believe executives have waited too long to address the audience malaise in the southern capital.
“It’s taken them a year of bad content and declining customer relations to come around to the idea that they may have a problem that needs to be fixed,” one veteran radio executive told News.com.au.
“They’ve been ridiculously slow off the mark to address the issues that have been apparent virtually since day one. In the mean time, they’ve literally fiddled while Rome burns with the rollout of new sales initiatives which they hope will stem the losses, the announcement of their new Integrate program, new business transformation programs and a round of new executive appointments.
“It’s staggering how slow acting they are – and it’s because the executive and the board have handed the keys to the empire to the talent, King Kyle.”
While the breakfast show continues, after 20 years, to dominate its slot in the brash Sydney market, in the southern capital the Kyle & Jackie O show finished eighth in the latest radio ratings survey with just 5.1 per cent of the market.
This despite the launch of multi-million dollar cash giveaways that would normally be expected to deliver a notable ratings spike.
Survey one of 2025 placed the breakfast show well behind 3AW (20.6), GOLD104.4’s Christian O’Connell (11.5), NOVA’s Lauren and Jase (10.1), FOX’s Fifi, Fev and Nick (8.4), Triple M’s Mick (Molloy) in the Morning (7.9), SmoothFM (7.5) and the ABC (6.3).
The southern audience malaise, which now threatens to impact the planned national rollout of the Kyle & Jackie O show to Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle, Canberra and the Gold Coast next year, is being compounded by a storm of related issues.
Among these are the damning findings of back-to-back Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) broadcasting investigations that found the program repeatedly breached decency rules by broadcasting explicit content including “sustained and vulgar graphic sexualised descriptions”.
In response to these findings, the not-for-turning ARN bosses have argued the breakfast show, which goes to air in the 6am to 10am timeslot, targets a “broadminded adult demographic”.
A brutal and stunningly effective advertiser boycott, driven by anti-misogyny/anti-obscenity women’s activist group Mad F**king Witches (MFW), has also found its mark.
MFW, which is comprised of a group of unpaid women and men monitoring the radio show, recording ad content and aggressively lobbying advertisers to withdraw from it, this week claimed to have driven 900 advertisers away from KIIS FM since launching the #VileKyle campaign.
The group insisted advertisers in the Sydney and Melbourne metro markets have dwindled from 142, recorded on November 25 last year, to just 70 at last week.
The claim is backed by industry talk that a broad slate of regular advertisers – who would normally pay $1373 to buy a spot on the show (a 60 per cent discount sees this adjusted to $549) – have abandoned the show.
This could account for the purported multi-million dollar drop in revenue.
Sources have told News.com.au that sales of the duo’s evening highlights show, Hour of Power, have been lower than expected.
Radio insiders say ARN is at last facing up to the issues that plagued Sandilands’ and Henderson’s former employers, Southern Cross Austereo, when the duo worked at 2DAYFM prior to 2014.
For years incensed community activist groups and media had sought to have Sandilands sacked or reprimanded for his insenitive and crass commentary.
In 2011, an anti-Sandilands group called “Sack Sandilands” published the mobile phone number of then SCA boss Rhys Holleran and urged listeners to call him and demand Sandilands’ be dismissed.
The following year, as a petition drew 35,000 signatories calling for Sandilands’ sacking, an advertiser boycott was launched against SCA prompting the withdrawal of big name advertisers including Holden, Vodafone, Telstra, Harvey Norman and Medibank.
Jenny Craig was among businesses to take their advertising elsewhere after Sandilands described one journalist as a “fat slag”.
He’d previously targeted one-time Jenny Craig ambassador Magda Szubanski, whose father was a Polish resistance fighter, saying she could lose more weight in a concentration camp.
ACMA subsequently imposed a five-year decency condition on 2DAYFM which the company appealed before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The AAT then reduced the condition as it applied to other SCA programs but maintained it across Sandilands’ breakfast show and his affiliated The Hot 30 Countdown.
A year later an indignant Sandilands announced he was jumping ship from SCA with his on-air partner, Henderson, and moving to KIISFM.
SCA is yet to recover from the turmoil having tethered their success to the duo’s.
In January it was announced Duncan Campbell, the network’s chief content officer, was leaving in a “strategic leadership restructure”.
Campbell played a key role in luring Sandilands and Henderson to KIIS and is understood to have played a part in signing off on their latest record-setting $200 million 10-year-contract, a deal which reportedly has contributed to 30-50 staff redundancies at ARN.
In February ARN announced its full year financial results. It revealed a decline in metro revenue, down 3 per cent, for Sydney and Melbourne, to $177 million.
When contacted for a response to specific questions, an ARN spokeswoman said: “ARN has a strong and stable advertiser base who continue to get high-quality results through the platform”.
Originally published as KIIS experiment takes a bite out of ARN bottom line as worried advertisers flee program
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