Annette Sharp: Is Kyle’s TV show over before it starts?
Given the hiss and wind coming from Kyle Sandilands this week, one could be forgiven for thinking the radio shock jock had just signed a multimillion-dollar television contract and been given his latest TV reprieve. But has it already been killed off?
Opinion
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Given the hiss and wind coming from Kyle Sandilands this week, one could be forgiven for thinking the radio shock jock had just signed a multimillion-dollar television contract and been given his latest TV reprieve.
Not quite. In fact rumours circulating yesterday have it that Ten has already reconsidered the program in response to Sandilands shooting his mouth off prematurely on radio on Wednesday.
After years of hawking his dream TV concept around town — from Seven to Nine and finally, desperately, to Ten (the network that sacked him in 2009 because he doesn’t know what’s crass and what’s not) — Channel 10 finally gave the green light to record one test pilot episode of Sandilands’ long-hoped-for dream project Trial By Kyle, a program based on the successful Judge Judy show starring real-life judge Judy Sheindlin.
Ten has excellent reason to be nervous about the program:
1. Sandilands has no legal qualifications.
2. He has no filter for what is obscene and offensive.
3. His driving record includes several brushes with the law: In 2016 he left a driver shaken in Woolloomooloo after the pair collided. That same year in the US he was apprehended by a fleet of police cars after, he claimed, accidentally driving his RV at high speed onto an airstrip while on his way to the Burning Man Festival. He has also been booked for speeding and nabbed driving an unregistered car.
4. Sandilands is renowned for being insensitive on air: In 2009 a 14-year-old girl participating in a radio stunt revealed she’d been raped at age 12. Sandilands’ response — “Right … is that the only (sexual) experience you’ve had?” — drew widespread criticism.
According to Sandilands, Trial By Kyle will see the shock jock solve “real-life problems” — everything from minor celebrity battles with paparazzi to legal conflicts.
As a taste he told his KIIS FM audience: “Maybe some girl got a tit job and wants to sue her doctor.”
The pilot episode, produced by Screentime Australia, is guaranteed to be salacious. Breasts, penises, vaginas, oral sex, prostitutes and poo are subjects Sandilands finds fascinating.
But sadly for Sandilands, television executives don’t (at least publicly) share his excitement for these subjects and the program concept is a legal minefield.
Not even Foxtel, which shot a pilot of a copycat show starring Desperate Housewives of Melbourne star Gina Liano, a qualified lawyer, in 2014, was able to make the concept work.
Ten will broadcast the show in a week it is calling “Pilot Week”, from August 19.
It will be scheduled alongside comedy shows entitled Skit Happens (sketch comedy featuring up-and-coming comics), Dave (Dave O’Neil narrative comedy), Kinne Tonight (with comedian Troy Kinne), Drunk History (boozing hosts talk Aussie history), Taboo (Harley Breen takes a comedic shot at a disadvantaged group), Disgrace! (disgraced politician Sam Dastyari talks outrage) and The Saturday Night Experiment (Rove McManus attempts to reinvent the tonight show — again) — all vying for an audience and a future.
The program garnering most favourable audience reaction and ratings will go into production for 2019.
According to a television insider, both Seven and Nine passed on Sandilands because they don’t believe he possesses enough mainstream appeal.
And, said one: “How could anyone take his judgment seriously?”
He is also a loose cannon, as Ten execs were reminded this week.