Steve Price: ‘Grubby’ Kyle and Jackie O must stop taking the piss and get out of Melbourne

Recording five women do their business in a “grubby” live-radio stunt proves why these Sydney trash talkers need to stop taking the p*ss and get out of Melbourne.

Picture this.

On a Thursday morning just before 8am, CFMEU bosses on a major government infrastructure project convince five female workers on the build to do something disgusting.

The five women— including a senior manager— are asked to record audio of themselves urinating in the worksite toilets.

Male workers on the project then sit down around a desk to guess from the sound of the wee whose toilet habits belong to which woman. A disgusting, woman shaming act of depravity.

The sort of behaviour we come to expect from building workers treating their female work mates as sex objects. It doesn’t help that a group of the male workers did the same thing the week before, somehow making this all some harmless fun.

Can anyone reading this imagine the outcry from our feminist leftie Premier Jacinta Allan or associated female rights activists who found out about the building site pissing guessing game. There would be — rightly — community outrage.

Only problem with the above scenario is it didn’t happen on a building site.

It happened at 7.50am on a Thursday two weeks ago on free to air radio run by a publicly listed company called ARN.

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O are not working in Melbourne. Picture: Instagram

Not surprisingly the degrading and grubby stunt was prime time on Kyle Sandilands’ struggling breakfast radio show on Melbourne’s KIIS 101.1 radio station.

His feckless co-host Jackie Henderson went along with the stunt, even allowing herself to be recorded sitting on a toilet. Has she no shame?

Before I get to the corporate responsibility of ARN — a major media company — allowing this garbage to go to air in a breakfast timeslot, let me attempt to walk you through what happened.

We have the audio but have taken a decision not to post it here for reasons that are about to become clear.

Apologies if you are offended with my description of what went to air but unless you call this socially unacceptable conduct out and wonder out loud what the broadcasting authorities are doing about it — it won’t stop.

Mark Knight cartoon.

The segment was called “dudes weeing.” Five women who work on the Kyle and Jackie-O show were asked by someone — presumably a producer — to record themselves urinating. Sandilands introduced the women live on air using a variety of nicknames including a young Assyrian woman — self-described that way — called Lingus who Sandilands pointed out “doesn’t suck d …. He said she was 26 years-old and single.

There was Lou, Mea, Nat and Jackie herself. It gets a whole lot worse and there are parts of what happened that are so descriptive and demeaning for the females that I can’t include it here.

There was talk of panty liners being ripped off, vaginal descriptions, talk of one of the participants menstruating and Sandilands talks about a sexual act in the most graphic and disgusting way.

This is free to air broadcast radio going to air in Melbourne. Thankfully not being listened to by many people.

The Sydney KIIS FM radio transplants are known for their grubby on-air content.

As I predicted earlier this year the imported Sydney broadcasters -on obscenely lucrative contracts- would not appeal to a Melbourne audience. Someone called Duncan Campbell from ARN made the absurd comment after this week’s radio ratings came out – the third in Melbourne for these losers – bombed yet again. Campbell tried to talk the result up saying, “building momentum in new markets requires time, and we remain confident in our long-term growth strategy.”

Typical radio industry spin and rubbish.

Let me tell you what’s really happened since Campbell and the ARN management inflicted this filth on Melbourne. At the end of 2023 KIIS 101.1 in breakfast – hosted by an on-air team of Jase and Lauren – rated 9.1 per cent and were the number 2 rated FM radio show in Melbourne.

ARN sacked them to make way for Sandilands and Henderson, presumably to justify the multimillion-dollar lifetime contract worth $200 million over ten years signed a year ago.

ARN needed national sponsors to pay the bills, is my guess. On Tuesday this week the act ARN sacked – Jase and Lauren, who are now on NOVA – won the FM ratings war with a 9.9 per cent share of the audience, while urinating live on air with Kyle, rated number five in the market with a 6.1 per cent up 0.2 – which statistically is no change.

Put simply ARN inflicted a down market Sydney radio show – with two overpaid grubs hosting it – into Melbourne while sacking their previous breakfast hosts who are now rated number one at NOVA.

I can’t stand Sandilands or Henderson, but I congratulate them on manipulating the ARN management into paying them a fortune regardless of the sleazy material they call content.

Clint Stanaway, Lauren Phillips and Jase Hawkins don’t need degrade themselves to get listeners.

ARN as a company though surely needs to be held accountable to the Australian Communications and Media Authority that is supposed to police standards. Problem there is you can’t complain directly to that body of public servants you have to complain to the station itself, first. The ACMA complaint website reveals it has not been updated since 2022.

The Communications Minister is a woman – Michelle Rowland – a lawyer who specialised in media law after university and is married with two daughters Octavia and Aurelia.

I wonder if Minister Rowland approves of an FM radio station recording some of its female staff urinating in the company toilets, and then broadcasting the results, along with sleazy and demeaning reviews of the sounds produced.

Perhaps she could pop into Prime Minister Albanese’s office and tell the PM what his mate is up to on air. Albanese was guest of honour at Sandilands wedding in April last year happily posing for wedding pics.

While ARN itself has two women on a six-member board plus two senior female executives – one Angela Ewers is in charge at ARN of people and culture.

Look Melbourne has a rich history of hugely successful radio breakfast shows.

Talented broadcasters like Ross Stevenson on 3AW, who has been at the top since the early nineties, and at NOVA with Jase and Lauren now number one FM.

They don’t need cheap sleazy stunts or confected outrage or prearranged callers or even big money giveaways. It’s just smart Melbourne content for a Melbourne audience.

I’ll say it again Kyle won’t work here – thank God.

Vossy, what a legend. Picture: Getty Images.

Likes

— Michael Voss doing a Ron Barassi and performing a citizen’s arrest ignoring potential danger from a knife wielding car thief.

— Q&A audience member brave enough to query whether multiculturalism is working in Australia live on the ABC.

— Police investigators 12-months on recovering two grand final medallions belonging to Tiger Shai Bolton.

— Victorian farmers at the Herald-Sun Bush Summit calling out rampant renewable projects threatening productive farming land.

Dislikes

— Cash strapped Allan Labor Government stomping on tourism with its 7 per cent short stay tax.

— CFMEU protests around Australia and their disgusting portrayal of our PM Anthony Albanese as Adolf Hitler – mindless thugs.

— City-wide building sites ignoring traffic rules and parking queued up trucks in peak hour clearways.

— Adam Bandt’s delusional super profits tax as a bargaining chip in a minority Labor Government.

Originally published as Steve Price: ‘Grubby’ Kyle and Jackie O must stop taking the piss and get out of Melbourne