In reality it is difficult to feel ‘surprised’ when you read of his most recent outburst because, in all honesty, Kyle has always been a bit of a fuckwit - some would even suggest more fitting language, but my Mum reads this. I don’t like him, I don’t listen to his radio shows and I don’t watch Australia’s Got Talent (although that’s not because he’s on it, its just because it is a fucking terrible show). Actually, I don’t really know anyone who likes him, to most he’s probably just “the chubby guy with the faux-hawk that Jackie O has to put up with”. Fair assessment.
He’s no stranger to controversy, this is after-all the same guy who hooked a 14-year-old girl up to a lie detector on national radio and then questioned her about her sexual history. The stunt was likened to child-abuse by psychologists, and he (rightly) lost his spot on Australian Idol because of it. But that was two years ago, he probably figured it was time for his “face for radio” to be back in the news.
So what’s he done this time? Well, Kyle and Jackie O are fronting a new show for Channel Seven, “A Night with the Stars”, after the first episode aired on Monday night an unfavourable review was published on news.com.au, to say Kyle didn’t take well to the criticism would be understatement of the year. This was how he reacted on his 2DAYFM show on Tuesday:
| Kyle | Some fat slag on the Telegraph website, sorry, the news.com.au, has already branded it a disaster. You can tell by reading the article she just hates us, and has always hated us. She trawled through the twitter comments and pulled out all the bad comments and ran them. What a fat bitter thing you are, you deputy editor of an online thing. You’ve got a nothing job anyway. You’re a piece of shit. |
|---|---|
| Jackie O | You take criticism so well. I don’t think I heard Hamish and Andy do this when this happened. |
| Kyle | I don’t care. Hamish and Andy handle their things the way that they do. But this low thing, … I can tell you, you are supposed to be impartial, you little troll. |
| Jackie O | Is it in the TV section? |
| Kyle | No, it’s on news.com.au. (Reads out the review.) “video killed the radio star. Shock jock Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O are maybe the latest airwave talent to fall victim of the small screen. Within minutes of the radio duo’s highly anticipated program a night with the stars premiered, fans had already taken to twitter to pronounce the 90-minute special ‘awkward and a ‘disaster’. You’re a bullshit artist, girl. That’s what you are. You should be fired from your job. And your hair. Your hair is very 90s. |
| Jackie O | They’ve put a picture of her? |
| Kyle | Yeah, and your blouse. You haven’t got that much titty to be wearing that low cut a blouse. Watch your mouth, girl, or I will hunt you down. |
| Jackie O | You have got to learn to take it on the chin a little bit. |
| Kyle | No. Even people I hate, I give them the benefit of the doubt. |
| Transcript extracted from News.com.au |
What. A. Twat. Or perhaps the seed of an idea for a brand new arcade game, “whack-a-twat”, where little Kyle’s pop their heads up and you get to beat the living fuck out of them with a shoe. Sounds like fun. It also sounds like the review of the new show could probably be applied to everything Kyle does, his life included. “Awkward and a disaster” - check.
I’d really like to listen to an actual audio recording of the outburst (if anyone knows where I might find one let me know), in particular to listen to Jackie O’s part in the discussion. Looking solely at the transcript it appears that there is some level of trying to reason with Kyle, but at the same time what she says seems to just bait him into expanding his ranting further. She should surely know better, right?
There a couple of really good posts that I’ve read in the past couple of days that rather than talking specifically about what a fuckhead Kyle is, address Jackie O directly, both in an “open letter” fashion, and both worth reading. This first one popped up in my Twitter feed yesterday “Breakfast Bar : A Letter To Jackie O”, and the second one was shared on Facebook while I was writing this post “An open letter to Jackie O”.
Each takes a slightly different approach but the general messages are, “why do you still work with him?”, and “why don’t you stand up against him when he goes off like this?”. It’s an exceptionally good point, they are partners, a duo, Jackie O should’ve jumped in and cut him off when he started instead of just playing the ‘second speaking part’ role that the transcript suggests. So why didn’t she? By playing along with his nonsense, and potentially baiting him to go further than he may have otherwise is pretty poor. To then defend him by saying he’s “not a woman hater” after he’s just threatened a female journalist live on air, is well… yeah, what? She didn’t really comment (on the review) while Kyle was raging out and in doing so essentially condoned his comments with her relative silence. Poor, poor form.
Jackie O needs to take this as a sign, she needs to move out of the large-hairy-pillow shaped shadow of Kyle and go it alone - or at the very least find a co-host that isn’t a complete tool - and the Austereo network should help her do so.
Anyway, following the outburst numerous sponsors have bailed out. Cancelling advertising and other sponsorships associated with Kyle, his radio shows or the radio network that is yet to kick his arse to the curb. And to be clear its not just one or two small sponsors, oh no, its a big list, of big companies, and the list is growing constantly. Holden, Good Guys, Vodafone, Blackmores, Harvey Norman, Fantastic Furniture, Medibank, Telstra, Crazy Johns and Mazda have all jumped off the crazy train and no doubt more are likely to follow.
It has taken them a couple of days but Austereo have finally popped up and said something:
“Kyle speaks his mind. However, in this case we recognise that his opinions have caused offence and sincerely apologise, Southern Cross Austereo does not condone his sentiments, is addressing issues with Kyle personally, and assessing internal systems and processes. We value our listeners and clients dearly and hold the utmost respect for their opinions and actions.”
See, that’s something, there isn’t much fucking substance to it, but it is something. However, if they truly valued the opinion and actions of their listeners and clients then they wouldn’t hesitate in cutting Kyle loose. He’s had more than enough chances. How many more sponsors have to pull out before they finally realise its doing them more harm than good to keep him around? Channel Seven, who for some stupid reason also pay Sandilands to appear on their network, are yet to officially do/say anything (that I can find). And while I haven’t seen anything mentioning whether anyone is pulling advertising from Seven, it must only be a matter of time, right?
The chances that Channel Seven do the ‘right’ thing and pull “Kyle and Jackie O’s A Night with the Stars” are slim to none. Why? Because they’ve probably convinced themselves that despite the premiere bombing that it might get massive ratings by everyone tuning in next week (I’m assuming it wasn’t a ‘one off’ thing, can’t be bothered checking - if it was a one-off then I think that makes Kyle’s reaction even worse) to see if it really is the massive train-wreck that the original news.com.au review suggested, and/or to see if Kyle says something stupid (or continues his tirade towards the journalist). That, and they’ve probably invested way more money in the project than they should of, and pulling it early would be an admission that they’ve screwed up. Perhaps it just need a quick rejig/recut, “Jackie O’s Night with the Stars” perhaps?
Kyle Sandilands. Vile human-being. Assuming he is indeed human.