SH-O-CK WARNING: Former ARN Boss Sounds Alarm as Kyle Sandilands Prepares to Unveil Major New Project
Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson’s former boss, Duncan Campbell, has given a stark warning as Sandilands prepares to launch his new subscription-based show.
Speaking to Craig Bruce and Irene Hume from the Game Changers Radio podcast, ARN’s former chief content officer said he believed Sandilands would be successful – but it would come at a cost elsewhere.
Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson’s former boss, Duncan Campbell has weighed in on the shock jock’s next move. A Current Affair
Following his settlement with his former employer, Sandilands had revealed his plans for the future to Bruce in a previous podcast episode.
The shock jock is taking things online, opting for a totally live show again, giving fans and listeners the same access to call in and listen live – similar to a radio show – but completely digitally.
Campbell said he had long believed Sandilands’ audience would stick with him no matter what, pointing to strong ratings even when he believed their KIIS FM breakfast show had lost it’s “edge” in its final years.
“My joke was always, he could play Himalayan whistle music, and they’d still listen,” Campbell said.
In his opinion, if anyone could make the new format work, it was Sandilands.
“I think he’ll make a success of it. I think, he doesn’t need too many numbers to make it successful,” he said, adding that just 20,000 subscribers paying $9.95 each would make more than $2 million.
However, he worried what that success would mean for the wider industry.
“But it’s a shame if this opens the door for other talent to move out of radio into that sort of subscriber world,” he said.
“Because they’re [taking] potential radio listeners. It doesn’t bode well for the industry if he’s successful because I think others will follow.”
Campbell also gave a tough assessment of Kyle & Jackie O’s disastrous Melbourne launch on the podcast. Instagram/@gamechangers.radio
As for Henderson, Campbell hoped she would eventually return to radio.
“I don’t know whether she’ll do breakfast radio again, but I think she could do radio again, no doubt, if she wants to,” he said.
Campbell also gave his assessment of what went wrong with the pair’s ill-fated radio demise.
“The last couple of years, and I think they’ve said this, the show went off the boil a little bit, but still, it was a very, very good show,” he said.
Sandilands settled his legal battle with ARN earlier this month. 9News
Even so, Campbell thought it was a “great shame” it ended the way it did.
“The show was one of the best in the world as far as I was concerned,” he said.
He had listened back to the duo’s show-ending disagreement after it went to air – and while he’d been fooled by their many on-air stunts before, he knew this time it was real.
“As it went on, I realised it was such a shame that they were never going to come back again,” he said.
