Never Idol – how Kyle Sandilands has a lot to juggle
Kyle Sandilands on his changed life, being a dad, the healing power of shock jock radio, being a hit song guru, and what’s behind those bad Melbourne ratings.
Kyle Sandilands is ready for a big year.
Australian Idol is about to hit our screens, he’s gearing up to tackle his first full year of the historic $100m decade-long radio deal with KIIS co-host Jackie O – and he and wife Tegan would like to have another baby.
That’s not too much, is it, the 53-year-old father of one laughs.
“We were just talking yesterday and we will probably start working towards the new child (this) year, I think – that’s what we’re really doing,” Sandilands tells Insider.
“But we’ve gotta time that out though because I don’t want to be away on auditions for Idol next year when she’s about to give birth, so that’s gonna be well-timed. Bruno will have to get the calendar out.”
There’s no doubt radio’s King Kyle has a lot to juggle. If he’s not advising music wannabes for Idol, he’s manning the deck for the Kyle and Jackie O show and trying to appeal to a Melbourne audience that’s tricker to infiltrate than first thought. Then there’s the music arm of his King Kyle entertainment business, while also consulting for industry heavyweights.
But to mentally prepare for 2025, he’s spent January slowing down.
He and wife of almost three years, Tegan Kynaston, have spent lazy days taking two-and-a-half year old son Otto to the newly-reopened Nelson Park Beach, just steps from their Sydney home.
They also spent time on the Central Coast to have quality cousin time for Otto with Tegan’s brother and his children – they purchased a Copacabana pad during Covid and will do renovations before they use it. It’s closer and easier to pack up a car than hop on a plane, so last year they sold their Port Douglas property, and now Copa calls.
In fact, they had their eye on the $4.3m clifftop mansion his mate Prime Minster Anthony Albanese snapped up in October, but it wasn’t as child proof as they needed.
“We actually looked at Albo’s house,” he says.
“We didn’t buy that one. I didn’t think with the toddler and a 30m cliff dropping off the back into the ocean, it didn’t seem that safe, so I gave that the wide berth, and then I saw he bought it, which is funny.
“We just pack the car up now, like the Beverly Hillbillies, and head up to the Gosford turnoff – that’s our vibe now.
“The sand’s so white and soft, and it’s just, it’s just great for kids.
“I never thought about what’s great for kids … but it’s a nice holiday where we’re not actually travelling anywhere, so then you can actually have a nice rest, rather than come back from holidays exhausted and then start the new year again on the radio, and then also Idol kicks in, so you’re working both ends of the day.”
The slow life is a good life, and summer in Sydney is exactly what the doctor ordered for the busy shock jock and his young family.
“It’s very busy in our street, it’s much busier than it used to be, and Tegan said, ‘Oh, let’s go down there’ – and I was like, ‘You know I don’t like the walking’,” he chuckles.
“But she said ‘Just come on, you’re on holidays’.
“So I went mopingly down there – and then we’ve been there every day since, it’s like a little bit of Europe down there.
“They’ve got the cafe going, the restaurant, the bit of music there – it’s every age group, all families on blankets and it’s excellent, so we’ve been pretty much living there for the last week and I’ve got a little caboose that we’re pulling the baby along in with all the shit and the drinks and the towels and all that, so that’s good.”
His whole world changed with the arrival of Otto.
“And all for the better,” he says.
“Better for my longevity for a start because, before the baby, you’d be carrying on here and doing that, and staying up for a couple of days and, oh, then you’re on a plane, you’re doing this and you’re going to this event and that, then you’re up early. So I bashed myself pretty hard.
“Now I’m very full of regret.
“I’m like … ahhhh … not there’s anything wrong with me physically, mentally there’s probably a lot of things wrong but I’m not gonna crack that old nut open,” he jokes.
They recently had a daycare parent-teacher interview for the toddler, who seemingly collects mates like his dad does.
“I’ve always found the parent-teacher interview very strange. Since he’s only just like two and a half – what could he possibly be getting up to?” he says.
“But it was quite interesting, because they don’t test them on the same things we did.
“The teachers (said) he’s a deep thinker, and he’s a this, and he’s a that, and he’s very sharing and very involved as a group, and he’s very good by himself, and he thinks – and I said shit, my report used to be ‘Shit at maths, shit at English, and he distracts others from learning’.
“So he’s all good and I’m still getting up early every morning so his mum gets to sleep in, which is nice.”
Back at work, winning over Melbourne – their way – is high on the to-do list for The Kyle and Jackie O Show, which began airing in Victoria’s capital in April. The show dropped to a 5 per cent market share at the last survey ratings for the year in December, while their KIIS FM predecessors Jase and Lauren, who joined Nova after being axed, became the city’s number one FM radio show with an 11.5 per cent share.
But Sandilands isn’t worried. They expected it. Growth takes time, and time they’ve got.
“I feel very relaxed (about it) but the Sydney figures are very good,” he continues.
“The Melbourne things have been a bit slow, but as I’ve said to our guys and the management of KIIS, they usually plan these things to take two years.
“I would have liked to have seen a bigger increase than what we’re at, because we’re on a five which is pretty shit, but I just think it’ll slowly grow.
“We’ve got a big increase in young males, which is what I predicted – that it’ll start off with the young males, and then some older people, some of the roughies, the old ‘Have a laugh’, somebody who’s still got a bit of a sense of humour, and that’s where we’ve seen growth already.
“But there’s nothing wrong with the other shows down there.
“It’s not as if they’re all shit … they’ve done very well for a long time. But they’re still all pretty much the same.
“So what happens with our show is, traditionally, once they listen for a little while, or they listen here and there – then they listen a bit longer, because we do longer format discussion. So if you usually glue on to us for a little while, we will probably have you for 20 minutes, there is sort of a mathematical pattern to it.
“And we’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”
And there’s a few things he’d like to set the record straight on.
“I have read a few things that were a bit untrue, saying that because Jackie and I’s deal was so huge that 50 people had to get made redundant – and that’s really got nothing to do with us,” he says.
“If anything, we were already nearly on that money anyway before so, really, they only kicked in another couple of million each to keep us.
“And they pretty much saved whatever operational costs they already had in Melbourne. We would have been an increase to Sydney regardless, they pretty much were doing Melbourne for free.
“And I asked the CEO, I said, ‘What’s the story here with these things? That just looks a bit dodgy’ – and he said the redundancies are coming from areas within the company as we go more digital.
“He said, like they’re just superfluous positions, so it’s not as if they’re on a cost saving, charity throwout sale. It’s just part and parcel of all media companies.
“Austereo is doing the same, Nova doing the same – but I was horrified when I read it.
“I thought, ‘oh, f--k, am I responsible for that? Like how dumb am I still believing the same shit?’ But I was assured that really had really nothing to do with it.”
If Melbourne had gone better, they’d have Brisbane on their list too, so who knows what the next 12 months will bring.
He and Jackie won’t be changing the show to draw in Victoria either – Sydney is too successful for that, he says.
“Exactly how it is in Sydney, I wouldn’t risk making a dent in the Sydney audience to pacify someone that may not like us, regardless if we change.
“And we were a bit ruder – but when Jackie first came back as well, she was normally the handbrake, and then there was no handbrake, so I just put pedal to the metal.
“I think if you wake up and you listen to Nova, or you listen to Fox FM, or Gold or 3AW or whatever you listen to down there, you’ve been doing that for 15 years.
“It takes a lot to flick over and have a listen to someone else.
“It’s not just like, ‘There’s that guy from the TV and the girl who’s lost a lot of weight’ – we’re just an afterthought.
“So when you do get your people that flew over, that those people will become bigger fans than what the current shows have.”
And as much as his shock value can put people off-side – it’s also what draws others in.
“Because everyone feels included. People that listen ring up and tell you things that they’ve never told anyone, and then a thousand people might hear that and think ‘That happened to me, now I don’t feel so bad about myself’.
“There’s a lot of healing that goes on that I don’t think people realise.
“have come up to me a lot over the years – and I mean, it’s got to be over a hundred times – ad they’ve grabbed me and looked me in the eye and said, ‘Seriously, I was going to kill myself. You guys stopped me’.
“People are at the lowest point in their life, and it’s the friendship.
“They didn’t feel alone because ‘we had you guys every morning’.
“And it’s very humbling because that’s what radio was for me when I was homeless.
“It was the only thing I had that wasn’t my own thoughts. So I do get it, and that’s super important to me.”
With Seven’s Idol auditions back on our screens next week, he says this year has everything we love about the show – and more.
“There wasn’t as many goons as I would like – you know, the real hilarious ones – but I think social media has ruined that for everyone, because everyone’s telling them on social media ‘You’re shit’ before I get a chance to tell them, But there’s still some that argue back, and there’s a lot of fun,” he says.
“And this year, there’s a bit more variety. Last year is a little bit country, just the way the cookie crumbled, but there’s more variety of everything, which is really good.
“I sort of forced someone on top of Marsha and Amy, a bit behind their back, but that’s all right.
“This one guy came in – he was a bit electro, hip hoppy, but he made all his own beats, and he used machinery, and sound effects and stuff – and Marcia said no because she’s a singer, and Amy’s like ‘No’, because he didn’t play guitar, and she’s a bit like that – if you don’t play guitar and listen to Triple J, then you’re not real,” he laughs.
“And then he left and we took a break about 20 minutes later and I went and found the guy and said, ‘Nah, we’re just going to bring you back’ and I just gave him a back door pass straight to the next round.”
That’s what he’s looking for – something new.
“Let’s not get stuck in the olden days where you have to play a guitar or play a trumpet or be like some sort of musical wizard,” he says.
“Yeah, some people are making a living out of this, and they may not even be the best singer, but they know how to sing in their lane.
“They know how to put on the show.
“Some of these great singers have got terrible showmanship skills, or they’re riddled with anxiety and then they shit themselves just before they’re supposed to pull off the biggest thing they’re supposed to do, they all implode.
“And, unfortunately, that’s just life.
“We all have these little things that slow us down and help us out, but that’s just part of the pressure cooker that is Idol. That squishes five years’ worth of a normal cycle of growing through the music industry into a couple of months.
“And that’s a lot of pressure and they can’t do it – their throats, they get headaches, they can’t sleep – and that weeds out the ones that can make a living out of it, and the ones that aren’t quite ready yet.”
Sandilands does a lot of consulting to record labels, because he knows what a hit song is. He knows what he likes and what he’ll play on the radio.
“Even when Dennis (Handlin, former head of Sony Music Australia) was back at Sony in those days, he’d ring up and say ‘I’m gonna play you two songs, and you tell me which one you like the best. Here we go. You’re on speaker. The whole room’s here’.
“And the same thing happens with people over in the US over the years.
“I’ve done stuff for Katy Perry’s records, Rihanna’s records – helped them pick which one’s going to be a single in which country, and whatever.
“And it used to only be the big, major record companies that were in play – Sony, Universal, Warners, BMG, all these big labels – now there’s all these small labels, because kids are making songs in their bedrooms and then pumping them out.
“Then a label will just do a quick deal with them, they’ll make a couple of hundred grand, and then, boom, that thing’s huge in Europe for the summer.”
“That’s why it’s not a bad thing that Sony has stepped away from Idol for the first time. It’s simply representative of a significant shift in the landscape.
“Because what the artist is better off with – and it’s been like this for a while – is the smaller label or a smaller independent manager,” he says.
“It’s not necessarily the biggest manager and the biggest record companies that are going to do you the solid.
“They’ve already got the Guys and the Deltas and the international roster.
“They’ve already got 40 people before you, and you’re new – if you don’t take off immediately, then you’re just f--king assholes, really.
“If you don’t launch immediately, then you’re dead in the water.”
His mum is now cancer free too, after a tough few years, so life is good and getting better.
“She’s good – she’s living down here in Rose Bay on the beach, and she loves life,” he says.
“She was just bitching to me before about how hot it was, and I said, ‘Oh, how horrible it must be to live there overlooking the water’,” he laughs.
“She’s just happy to be down here with Otto and us.”
Australian Idol Premieres 7pm, February 2, on Channel 7 and 7plus
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Originally published as Never Idol – how Kyle Sandilands has a lot to juggle
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