Kyle and Jackie O push for record-breaking 10-year $200m radio deal

The king and queen of breakfast radio are chasing an eye-watering $200 million joint deal to remain at KIIS FM for another 10 years — and they’ll walk if they don’t get it.

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O are chasing a massive $200 million joint deal to remain at their current radio home, KIIS FM, for another 10 years.

The duo have set their monster $10 million-a-year asking price with the expectation it will take them through to the end of 2034, when one or both commentator will retire from radio.

The mooted new contract is a record-breaking proposition which dwarfs the pair’s current $5-million-a-year deal (plus revenue incentives, expected to bring in up to another million), and that of other highly paid radio veterans, including Ray Hadley on $3.5 million a year, Amanda Keller on $2.5 million a year, and Carrie Bickmore on $1.5 million a year.

Among Sandilands’ and O’s other demands, this column is informed, is the stipulation that the live Kyle and Jackie O Show be networked to other markets rather than remain exclusively Sydney-centric on the lucrative FM band or national via the less lucrative iHeart podcast.

Melbourne remains a key target for the duo.

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson through the years.

Sandilands and Jackie O are also pushing for greater resources to be thrown at marketing and promotion, and less censorship.

Yesterday Sandilands’ manager, Bruno Bouchet, declined to comment when approached, while a spokeswoman for ARN boss Ciaran Davis said: “We don’t comment on speculation.”

Sandilands and Henderson have been consistent ratings winners for KIIS FM.

Radio boss Ciaran Davis is said to be crunching the numbers. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

With another 15 months to run on Sandilands’ and O’s existing five-year contract at KIIS, reports that have been sweeping the industry since July have made transparent the fact the enterprising duo are contemplating jumping ship and have opened themselves up to approaches from rival radio networks.

At the top of their list of eager suitors is believed to be John Kelly, the bullish new CEO of the embattled Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), home to 2DAYFM, the pair’s former employer.

Sandilands and O previously heaped scorn on that company and its management when the scandal-plagued duo walked away from 2DAY in 2013 to join a revamped ARN.

It’s believed the pair are open to moving back to their former station, 2DAY FM, whose ratings never recovered after they left.

But in recent times Sandilands has become openly critical of his new bosses at KIIS.

“One day, we’re just going to not be there …. We make them hundreds of millions of dollars and they barely even recognise our existence,” he said in 2021, venting his annoyance with bosses over the airwaves.

It’s estimated Sandilands and O are worth upwards of $70 million a year in revenue to ARN.

Their show, consistently Sydney’s highest rating music show, regularly reaches an audience share of around 15 per cent of the market, bolstering that station’s audience across the day.

Without the duo, ARN’s share might be expected to plummet, something that won’t be lost on hopeful SCA boss Kelly, whose Sydney station’s ratings collapsed when the duo left that station in 2013. 2DAY is yet to recover.

Jackie and Kyle at his extravagant wedding to Tegan Kynaston.

Henderson and daughter Kitty celebrate Otto Sandilands’ first birthday.

Industry insiders claim Sandilands’ and O’s boss Ciaran Davis, who signed off on a skywriter flying over a management meeting attended by the pair in July — the message in the sky reinforcing Sandilands’ own view that “KIIS is KJ (Kyle and Jackie)” — is now busy crunching numbers to hit the duo’s $200 million asking price.

To find the funds, savings would have to made, something that has started to worry staff who are in fear the axe would have to fall across the network.

ARN currently has 148 localised programs across the country and 26 newsrooms, so some operational streamlining seems likely.

That said, Davis last month said localisation was a “key differentiator” for SCA in the regions and something he is invested in.

Sandilands is understood to find the proposition of reviving the failing 2DAYFM, of whose management he once said “couldn’t get a root in a brothel with a wheelbarrow full of money”, tantalising.

It would be the second time the Kyle and Jackie O program had turned a radio network’s fortunes around.

Radio executives at SCA could not be reached for comment on Friday.

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