Joe Hildebrand: Witchy spell not the reason for Kyle and Jackie O’s ratings hell
A new campaign has started against Kyle and Jackie O since their move into Melbourne. But it reveals a ridiculous wider issue, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
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Like a landed fish flapping on the deck, I had thought the social media outrage industry was firmly – or rather floppily – in its death throes.
Surely the idiocy of cancel culture has, by now, finally been cancelled.
But it seems there is still a death twitch or two to go before rigor mortis finally sets in.
This became sadly apparent when I happened across a story in the Nine newspapers about a campaign by the online activist(s) “Mad F***ing Witches” to cancel Kyle Sandilands.
You honestly could not pick a more tired and predictable 21st century cliche if you tried. These people have the imagination of a day-old potato.
And this time, unlike the countless other times over the decades, there wasn’t even a single particular crime that Kyle was accused of committing.
Instead, like a weird echo of a lifetime achievement award, he seemed to be being condemned for his body of work.
Indeed, the most significant transgression appeared to be Kyle and Jackie O having the gumption to broadcast their saucy hit FM breakfast show into dour hipster Melbourne.
How dare they violate Australia’s last remaining safe space with all their rude words and sex talk!
And, indeed, Melbourne seems to have responded accordingly, with lacklustre ratings for the oh-so-Sydney show’s debut.
But that is entirely the point.
If people don’t want to listen to Kyle and Jackie O they don’t have to – no one is putting a gun to their head.
Personally, I have appeared on the show more often than I have listened to it.
I love the gang but I’m about three decades older than their target audience and the only person I’m a chance of scoring with is currently sleeping in the upstairs bedroom.
parently one ardent listener is Mad F***ing Witches, whose radio must be so stubbornly stuck on the dial that the only way to get relief is to destroy the show itself.
Indeed, MFW has made it its life mission to cancel anyone or anything with whom it does not agree by bombarding advertisers both real and imagined with its displeasure.
We are dealing with a Twitter Karen Kraken.
And even by Nine newspapers’ always independent reportage, it turns out their impact is far more imagined than real.
The wobbles were fearlessly revealed in the sixth paragraph: “MFW founder and spokeswoman Jennie Hill claimed ‘early indications’ suggested the boycott, codenamed #VileKyle, had started yielding results.
“She said the group’s own auditing showed fewer advertisers than when the show launched in Melbourne, but she admitted gauging its impact was difficult.”
Difficult indeed.
Veteran journo Andrew Hornery had, to his credit, already revealed in the second par: “MFW’s claims they have convinced big-name advertisers, including Myer, AAMI, Bunnings, Samsung and Hamilton Island, to abandon the show have been denied by the companies, all of which confirmed they were unaware of the campaign.”
Sounds like MFW tried to sell Hornery a pup that turned into a dog even as he was writing it.
When the denial runs higher than the allegation you know you’re not waiting up late for a Walkley.
And so even by the standard of its own curated narrative this online activist’s claims were at best baseless and possibly misleading. A dark irony for someone demanding higher standards of the media.
Another irony is that Hornery himself was a target of a cancel culture campaign after he awkwardly – and, I believe, without any malice – revealed that Rebel Wilson was gay.
Big whoop I would’ve thought but the online pile-on was savage.
I defended him at the time, too.
And so it is a cause that unravels even in the telling.
A last desperate hurrah from outrage merchants whose product is rapidly reaching its use-by date.
Even our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the iconoclastic free speech warrior Piers Morgan that he deplored cancel culture.
And he attended Sandilands’ wedding to underscore the point.
If even the first left-of-centre Prime Minister in a decade is publicly decrying this toxic social contagion then just how sad and twisted do you have to be to try to keep it going?
Happily the answer is there for all to see.
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