Kyle Sandilands Suspended And Contract In Jeopardy After On-Air “Attack” On Jackie O

Radio host Jackie “O” Henderson  has quit Australia’s highest paying radio show, following an on-air argument with co-host Kyle Sandilands, who has also been suspended from the KIIS FM show.

In an ASX announcement on Tuesday, ARN Media, the owner of KIIS FM, said Henderson “has given notice she cannot continue to work with Mr Sandilands”, and that the Kyle and Jackie O Show would be taken off-air “effective immediately”.

“Ms Henderson will cease to present the Kyle and Jackie O Show,” the statement said.

The move comes after an argument on February 20, where Sandilands accused Henderson of being “off with the fairies”, and criticised her interest in astrology, claiming they made her “almost unworkable”, and claimed her fixation on astrology charts made her sound like a “drug addict”. This all happened while the pair was looking at the astrological birth chart of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

The seven-minute-long exchange was described as an “attack” by Henderson, who then took a week off from the show, before sensationally quitting.

In addition to Henderson’s departure, ARN Media also announced yesterday afternoon that Sandilands could be out of the job if he does not prove within 14 days that he did not breach his contract for an alleged “act of serious misconduct”. In the meantime, the show has been taken off air.

ARN has offered Jackie O an alternate show on the network.

Controversies and homophobic comments

Kyle and Jackie O have been a radio duo for 27 years, moving to breakfast in 2005 and then to KIIS in 2014. They have been under contract in a lucrative $200 million, 10-year deal that was set to run until December 2034.

Their partnership has been defined by controversies, including the duo being taken off the air in 2009  when they were found to have breached guidelines during a lie-detector segment where Sandilands asked a teenager who had been raped about her sexual experience.  Last year, the Australian Communications and Media Authority threatened ARN with action to force the pair to rein in their “vulgar, sexually explicit and deeply offensive” content. More recently they narrowly avoided prosecution over on-air comments made during the trial of triple-murderer Erin Patterson.

Sandilands in particular has a history of being called out for “homophobic” comments, such as disparaging comments about gay men and “sticky floors”, introducing their gay newsreader Brooklyn as a “massive homo” who “used to be a real gay whore”, and breaking radio decency standards by calling Mpox “a big gay disease”.