Kyle and Jackie O sign 10-year deal, take breakfast show national

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson have signed a staggering new contract that is reportedly worth more than $200 million and will keep them on air with KIIS FM for the next 10 years.

The deal, which runs until 2034 and includes base salary plus a revenue-share arrangement, will earn each of the hosts of The Kyle and Jackie O Show about $10 million a year. It also brings the show live to Melbourne for the first time from next year.

KIIS’s star radio hosts Kyle and Jackie O.

Announcing the deal live on their show on Wednesday morning, Sandilands read from a prepared statement.

“Jackie and I have resigned,” he said.

“Re-signed,” Henderson corrected him.

“Oh, re-signed. They didn’t put a hyphen in there.”

“We love working here, we really wanted to stay with this network,” Said Henderson.

“This is run like a real radio station,” added Sandilands. “It’s all about making great radio first, not just about making money. Well, for me it’s about making money.”

In announcing the deal to the ASX on Wednesday morning, publicly listed company ARN Media – which owns the KIIS and Gold networks – revealed it had also signed Melbourne’s top-rated FM breakfast radio presenter Christian O’Connell for another five years.

The contracts mean Sandilands and Henderson will remain with the network until the end of 2034, while O’Connell – who has stated his desire to eventually have his show broadcast into the Sydney market – will remain with Gold until the end of 2029.

As part of the deal to secure the long-term future of its three biggest on-air talents, ARN revealed “$7 million worth of shares in ARN Media (equivalent to approximately 7.5 million shares at yesterday’s closing share price), will be issued to Kyle Sandilands, Jackie Henderson and Christian O’Connell and will vest at the end of the contract term”.

Those new arrangements come into effect from January 2025. Efficiencies from simulcasting The Kyle and Jackie O Show are expected to reduce the cost of the new deals “to a net total increase of approximately $2-3 million per annum”.

Sandilands has long been a divisive figure in Australian media, and has been found guilty of breaches of the Broadcasting Act by the Australian Communications and Media Authority on several occasions.

In 2009, while on 2Day FM, he humiliated a 14-year-old girl on air by asking her about her sexual experiences while she was attached to a lie detector. Henderson cut that segment short when the girl’s distress became obvious.

He has fat-shamed people – including Magda Szubanski and a journalist who had been critical of his behaviour – and frequently used foul language on air.

In March this year, the ACMA found he had breached decency standards in comments made about the Paralympics, and in August it ruled he had done so again with comments about monkeypox being a “big gay disease”.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the controversies, Sandilands and Henderson are arguably the most successful broadcast duo in the country. In the latest radio ratings, Kyle and Jackie O had the top-rated show in Sydney, with a 16.3 per cent share of all listeners in the breakfast slot. That was up from 14.7 per cent in the previous survey.

O’Connell held an 11.5 per cent share of the Melbourne radio market with his breakfast show on Gold. That was down from the 12.2 per cent share he scored in the previous survey, but it still left his show as the most listened-to program on FM radio in the all-important breakfast slot.

The deal comes a week after Sandilands and his wife Tegan Kynaston purchased a four-bedroom, four-bathroom house in Sydney’s Vaucluse for $14 million.

Sandilands’ pre-auction purchase is well above the suburb’s $8.1 million median house value according to Domain.

The house itself has more than doubled in value since it last traded in 2017 for $6.28 million.

Sandilands also owns acreage in Glenorie, north-west of Sydney, which he purchased for $3 million last year, and a 61-hectare hobby farm in the Southern Highlands purchased for $2.98 million in late 2017.

Henderson has also been trading in the high-end market this year. Having sold her Woollahra home for $13 million, she purchased a knock-down rebuild on an oceanfront reserve in Clovelly for $13.25 million.

With Lucy Macken

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