Kyle Sandilands: ‘I’m gunning for Brisbane’
The radio star says he wants the Kyle and Jackie O breakfast show to be networked.
Kyle Sandilands has confirmed that there are plans for his top-rating Sydney radio show to be broadcast live in his hometown of Brisbane.
Sandilands has told University of Southern Queensland radio students that he wants the show, cohosted by Jackie ‘O’ Henderson, to be heard far and wide.
In a Zoom call with the students and their lecturer, former ABC and 4BC announcer and Sandilands’ childhood friend Spencer Howson, Sandilands was asked about the Kyle and Jackie O show’s debut in Melbourne on Monday, 29 April.
When Howson suggested the show would “perhaps” be heard in Brisbane one day, Sandilands replied: “Not even ‘perhaps’. I’m gunning for Brisbane. Make no mistake, I want the whole country.
“To me, Melbourne is a test and, if we do well, I’m gonna push real hard to get it everywhere.”
The show in Melbourne will be the same product featuring the same songs, but with local advertising windows, local traffic and local news. Presumably a similar format would occur here if it’s greenlit by his bosses at the Australian Radio Network.
Making that decision difficult for them is the fact that the existing KIIS 97.3 breakfast team in Brisbane, Robin Bailey and Kip Wightman, have done very well in the ratings — even beating Wightman’s often-top-rating former colleagues Ash Bradnam, David “Luttsy” Lutteral, and Susie O’Neill at Nova 106.9.
According to the radio ratings results released on Thursday, April 18, B105 and Triple M are first and second in terms of audience share, with the places reversed in the breakfast shift. KIIS was third in brekkie, with the field continuing to be very tight.
Among AM stations, classic hits station 4BH is ahead in breakfast, where the otherwise-networked station has local talent Bob Gallagher in the chair and leading the second pack overall. The gap between AM and FM is starting to narrow (which is a subject for another post).
News-talk station 4BC is up overall, with the star performer being Mornings announcer Bill McDonald. Drive remains the station’s weakest weekday shift.
ABC Brisbane, which has had a series of poor surveys, is still in all-time low territory. Surely, somebody must be pushing the panic button there.
When Howson was hosting the ABC’s breakfast shift, he reached a peak ratings audience share of 17.2 in 2015, and he regularly topped the ratings over a decade-long tenure.
In the most recent figures, breakfast hosts Craig Zonca and Loretta Ryan rated 5.9 and were beaten by all the local stations (not counting SEN, which has a local breakfast show but rates barely a blip) and even national youth network Triple J. But the brekkie result was healthy compared to the overall numbers, with ABC Brisbane scoring just a 4.2 share.
Highlights of the USQ Zoom call are on X here.
Disclaimer: Brett Debritz has worked for 4BC and the ABC and has been a guest on most other Brisbane radio stations at one time or another.