As Sandilands faces eight weeks off air for treatment, show’s producers are faced with a big choice
News Sandilands’ doctors have flagged his need for “two to eight weeks” off, “for surgery”, should cause concern for Sandilands’ KIISFM bosses.
OPINION
Five years after Kyle Sandilands brought his breakfast radio co-host Jackie “O” Henderson to tears with a televised prank that prompted swift national backlash, the perpetually “dying” shock jock notched up his latest health-associated viral moment this week by dropping a new medical bombshell.
“I’ve given the staff some very bad news,” Sandilands said on Monday, in part to explain his most recent radio sickie. “It’s the reason I wasn’t here to celebrate Jackie’s (50th) birthday on Friday …
“On Friday I was told by my medical team … that I have a brain aneurysm and it requires immediate attention. Brain surgery.”
A slow-to-respond Henderson could offer only a blasé-sounding: “I just can’t compute it.”
New Year, new health crisis.
To the duo’s many critics and their apathetic Melbourne audience Sandilands next directed a testy rebuke: “You may get your wish. I may be dead.”
By Friday, a still-on-air Sandilands threw more fuel on the topic by announcing he had since been diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm and “very bad calcium build-up in the heart where I’m likely to have a heart attack.”
Sandilands’ much predicted and promoted death has been a long time coming.
His collaborator Henderson deserves acknowledgment for her forbearance over two decades.
She’s carried the can on air during Sandilands’ inestimable periods of sick leave, ridden the emotional roller coaster concerning his frequent medical emergencies (while enduring her own) and still managed to mostly publicly fret over him and appear upset during the duo’s video live streams.
For two decades she has wept, gasped and chortled through an A-Z of Sandilands’ health crises; his anal prolapses and addictions, his brain aneurisms and bouts of bronchitis, his colonoscopies, depressions, ENT issues, fungal infections, gastric reflux episodes, hernias and headaches etc.
She knows the routine and must know or can predict where the banter is headed as it often is, and was during the week, to her co-host’s need for more time off.
The news Sandilands’ doctors have flagged his need for “two to eight weeks” off, “for surgery”, should cause concern for Sandilands’ KIISFM bosses who have thrown everything along with the bathroom sink at networking the duo’s program to Melbourne.
Despite signing lucrative $100 million 10-year contracts in 2023, the duo’s ratings have steadily waned in Melbourne since the program’s launch in that market in April last year.
In the latest ratings survey, the program delivered a disastrous 5 per share in Melbourne finishing behind 3AW, Nova, Fox FM, Gold104.3, Smooth, ABC and Triple M and eighth in its slot.
Conversely in Sydney, the Kyle & Jackie O show continues to dominate the FM stations.
On Friday radio industry insiders voiced the belief radio bosses will use the time Sandilands is away for surgery to have a go at fixing the show.
Eight weeks, the maximum time Sandilands plans to take off to have brain surgery, equates to the length of one standard radio ratings survey.
A survey period would provide a timely window for ARN executives to reboot the program in that market, perhaps bringing in a series of Melbourne-friendly celebrities to fill Sandilands’ seat while attempting to address the shocking exodus of listeners and advertisers.
A slate of valued advertisers, including AMP, Bendigo Bank, Flight Centre, Australian Super and Taronga Zoo, have pulled their ad spots from the show since the program launched in Melbourne in April last year over growing social outrage at the obscene and inappropriate content being broadcast over the breakfast airwaves.
On Friday executives from KIISFM’s parent company ARN were asked for a timeline of when Sandilands will take his “immediate” leave and if KIISFM management – and audiences – might be fatigued by Sandilands’ long list of medical issues.
An ARN spokesman said: “ARN is fully committed to supporting Kyle through this process and is taking his diagnosis with the utmost seriousness.
“As he is still in the early stages of exploring treatment options, we are not able to provide further details at this time. Kyle has always been open with his listeners about his life, and he will continue to keep them informed as he navigates this journey.”
ARN chairman Hamish McLennan even offered an apology for the program’s content during the week.
Speaking on ABC radio, McLennan said: “I apologise if it goes over the mark from time to time but if you do compare it to what’s out there on the social platforms and the internet, the stuff being spewed out there is terrible.”
It was hardly a ringing endorsement of a program he said could take two or three years to get right.
“We’ll keep working it until we get it right,” he said.
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On last Monday’s show, meanwhile, the program’s executive producer Nat Penfold interjected with her own take on Sandilands’ latest health crisis.
“Are you happy for us to leverage this (brain aneurysm) for content?” she probed.
“Yes, of course,” a perky sounding Sandilands replied.
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