‘Grubby buffoon’ Kyle ‘won’t work in Melbourne’, Project star and radio host Steve Price predicts

A fellow radio shock jock has predicted Kyle and Jackie O will flop in Melbourne in an extraordinary TV broadside.

Project co-host Steve Price has unloaded on fellow radio host Kyle Sandilands and labelled him a “grubby buffoon” during a discussion of the FM shock jock’s lucrative new deal.

Sydney radio duo Sandilands and Jackie O Henderson signed their blockbuster new contracts live on-air on Wednesday morning, telling listeners of The Kyle & Jackie O Show they were extending their employment with ARN for another decade.

The deal, worth a reported $200 million, will also syndicate the show into Melbourne for the first time next year, at the expense of KIIS FM’s current Melbourne breakfast show, hosted by Jason Hawkins and Lauren Phillips.

Steve Price hit out at Kyle Sandilands on Wednesday's episode of The Project. Picture from Channel 10

Phillips held back tears during their show on Wednesday after learning of its fate.

“This is certainly not the way we wanted to bow out,” she said.

“We didn’t have a choice,” she added. “It’s a business decision that we have been told is what’s happening. We don’t want to say goodbye.

“We didn’t have to be here this morning to make this announcement, but we’re here.”

On Wednesday evening’s edition of The Project, radio host and part-time panellist Steve Price appeared to share his thoughts on Sandilands and Henderson’s new deal.

While Price conceded Sandilands and Henderson were “certainly worth $200 million”, he was less complimentary about their prospects in the Melbourne market.

“If you are successful, they will pay you the big money,” said Price.

“Kyle’s a grubby buffoon, and I don’t think grubby buffoons work in Melbourne. I probably shouldn’t call him a grubby buffoon. He’s just a grub.”

The, ahem, directness of Price’s comments sparked guffaws from the panel.

Price went on to predict that the show’s explicit nature would not gel well with audiences in Melbourne, and would likely flop as a result.

“Melbourne will not embrace the style of that program as it is right now,” he argued.

“Some of the sexually explicit material is off-putting. Sarah [Harris] would know better than anyone else on that panel that it’s school drop-off time for kids.

“You don’t want people talking about anal sex at breakfast time, in my view. That’s what they do on that show.”

“Or at dinner time on national television either, Steve,” interjected a bemused Waleed Aly.

Price claimed their radio show would not work in Melbourne. Picture from Channel 10.

Price was undeterred.

“I can’t downplay the content of the show, that’s what it’s like,” he continued.

“And Melbourne people are not going to embrace that. Look, the company that is putting them on the air has a different view to that, and I may be proven to be completely wrong, but that doesn’t happen very often.”

Harris, quipping that Price was “clearly not a fan” of the pair, asked why their popularity in Sydney’s market was nevertheless so enduring.

“Well lack of competition, perhaps, would be one reason. They’ve been there a long time; that’s huge in radio. The people who’ve been most successful in Sydney radio have been there a long time,” Price responded.

Next he was asked whether the length of the contract would be an issue given the show’s “smutty” content, with Sandilands set to be in his sixties by the time it expires.

“Can a 60-year-old be smutty?” he was asked.

“I don’t think they can, and that is part of the problem,” said Price.

“But Kyle seems to be ageless. I don’t know how, with that unhealthy lifestyle he has. But he doesn’t seem to age much. So perhaps he can, at 62, still be (telling these jokes).

“You can’t imagine he’s going to be appealing to the 18-28 year old demographic that the radio station is paying him to drag in. I find that really puzzling.”