When Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson first started broadcasting together, it was on the Hot 30 Countdown at the turn of the millennium.
The world had survived the Y2K bug and Savage Garden was topping the charts.
Henderson was already hosting the show with her then-husband “Ugly Phil” O’Neil, who left the program for London in 1999 after the pair separated.
A lucrative radio marriage between Sandilands and Henderson would begin, culminating in the pair signing a 10-year contract worth $200 million with the Australian Radio Network (ARN) to continue their KIIS FM radio show until 2034.
Jackie O and Kyle Sandilands started working together at Southern Cross Austereo. (AAP: Tracey Nearmy)
But that professional relationship has now been severed, with Henderson giving notice that she “cannot continue to work with Mr Kyle Sandilands”.
ARN has written to Sandilands saying his behaviour on the show on February 20 “is an act of serious misconduct”.
Henderson has been offered the possibility of an alternative show on the ARN network.
Tensions building
Henderson and Sandilands were as thick as thieves.
Early listeners to the show noticed a genuine warmth between the two — their steadfast partnership seeing them through numerous scandals through which they stuck together.
Henderson and Sandilands’s relationship lasted through respective divorces, but they seemed to be drifting apart as a newly single Henderson re-entered the dating pool while a happily married Sandilands, who had the prime minister at his wedding, often spoke on air about raising his young son.
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And while the radio duo has now imploded, for regular listeners of the show, the writing had been on the wall long before their show on Friday, February 20.
That was the morning Sandilands took his co-host to task live on air, claiming she lacked professionalism and that “everyone in this building has mentioned it to me”.
Henderson had been examining Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s star chart with Sandilands telling her that her “fixation” on astrology meant she wasn’t doing her job properly and was “off with the fairies”.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but, as I said, fascinating, but I don’t think it should be at the detriment of everything else on the show,” Sandilands said.
Henderson was off work last week to “gather her thoughts” while Sandilands hosted the show with newsreader Brooklyn Ross, except for Thursday when he called in sick, with the station airing repeats.
Listeners were told Henderson would return on Monday, but she didn’t.
A partnership plagued by scandals
Henderson and Sandilands stood by each other through numerous scandals — and there have been plenty.
The Kyle and Jackie O Show began in a Drive time slot on 2DayFM and moved to Breakfast for Sydney listeners in the mid-2000s.
Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O interview Paris Hilton in the KIIS studios. (Getty: Cole Bennetts )
The pair could also be heard for a few years on weekends on the nationally syndicated Take 40 Australia.
In 2008, Henderson and Sandilands both signed on to become hosts of the reality TV show Big Brother.
“As someone who uses shock and smut on a regular basis, I was a fan of shows that took risks, so I loved the idea that our season of Big Brother would get people talking,” Sandilands wrote in his 2012 memoir Scandalands.
In 2009, their 2DayFM radio show was taken off air after a mother rang in wanting to work out if her 14-year-old daughter had experience with sex and drugs.
The hosts strapped the teenager to a lie detector test, with the girl eventually breaking down, saying she was raped when she was 12.
“Right … is that the only experience you’ve had?” Sandilands responded.
Sandilands was suspended again later that year when he and Henderson were discussing comedian Magda Szubanski’s contract with weight loss company Jenny Craig.
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Sandilands said the Kath and Kim actor, who has Polish heritage, could lose more weight if she was in a concentration camp.
In November 2013, Sandilands and Henderson announced their defection from 2DayFM and Southern Cross Radio to KIIS and ARN, taking their listeners with them when they began broadcasting at the rival station in 2014.
They also brought more controversy with them.
In 2019, Sandilands called Christians “dumb as dog sh**” for believing the immaculate conception story of Jesus and mother Mary, for which he was forced to later apologise on air for.
Kyle Sandilands married Tegan Kynaston in 2023. (Instagram: @kyleandjackieo)
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found the Kyle and Jackie O Show breached the Commercial Radio Code of Practice multiple times in 2024, including during a guessing game where audio clips of male and female staff members urinating were aired, with the hosts guessing which audio belonged to which staff member.
Comments were also made about the genitals of participants.
Getting to the bottom of the ratings
On air, you’ll hear promos touting the Kyle and Jackie O show as Australia’s most listened to radio program, but the truth is a little more complicated.
Sandilands and Henderson have long claimed that they are number one in the ratings.
But in the latest survey, the Kyle and Jackie O Show came in at #2 overall in Breakfast in Sydney behind 2GB’s Ben Fordham.
The Kyle & Jackie O Show came in at #2 overall in Breakfast in Sydney in the last survey. (Facebook: The Kyle and Jackie O Show)
In Melbourne, where they’ve been syndicated since April 2024, they came in at #8.
Despite loud promos and overblown publicity, it’s common knowledge in radio circles that the pair only dominates when it comes to FM radio.
The Kyle and Jackie O Show could lay claim to being the #1 FM Breakfast show or the #1 hit music station, as they liked to put it. But that ignores a large section of the community that tunes into AM radio.
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While 702 ABC Radio Sydney’s ratings have seen better days, the Kyle and Jackie O Show fared even worse when 702 was highly competitive with 2GB’s Alan Jones largely undefeated in the #1 spot between 2002 and 2020, with 702 coming in at #2.
The first time the duo could legitimately claim the #1 overall spot was in Survey 4 in 2021, with a 15.5 share ahead of Ben Fordham’s 13.3. Fordham took over from Jones in June 2020.
Since their switch to KIIS in 2014, the Kyle and Jackie O Show has reached #1 in only 12 surveys out of 93.
While they may not have always been the most listened to, they were certainly the highest-paid radio stars in Australia.
Each earned about $10 million a year when you factor in their base salary and revenue-share arrangement.