Radio’s killing season goes into overdrive, but is the Kyle & Jackie O national strategy dead too?
ARN Media has killed its Kiis 97.3 Brisbane breakfast show, but seems to be ruling out expanding the Kyle & Jackie O Show into Queensland anyway. What gives?
Unless ARN Media is deliberately offering weasel words to its staff, the company has lost its nerve on networking The Kyle & Jackie O Show into other markets.
Ahead of new CEO Michael Stephenson presenting the company’s first Upfront event on Wednesday night, staff were told today what won’t be happening on Kiis FM in Brisbane.
The Robin, Kip & Corey Oates show has been chopped.
The axing is not entirely a surprise. Although Robin Bailey, Kip Wightman and former NRL star Oates improved their share slightly in the last ratings survey, they were still fifth in the market behind the breakfast shows of B105, Triple M, Nova and ABC Brisbane.
Now with Corey Oates… but not for long (Kiis FM)
No doubt the reason for the timing of the announcement is the ARN Upfront event. With the trio not coming back next year, the decision needed to be communicated beforehand.
Which immediately leads to the logical conclusion that this clears the way for networking the embattled The Kyle & Jackie O Show into Brisbane. While the Sydney-based show has failed to rate in Melbourne and is awaiting the next stage of the Australian Communications & Media Authority’s ponderous disciplinary process over decency breaches of radio’s code of practice, ARN is locked into a further nine years of a $200m contract with Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson which only makes business sense as a national show.
Hindsight suggests they should have started the networking into Brisbane rather than Melbourne anyway.
But today’s staff memo from chief audience and content officer Lauren Joyce suggests that’s not the plan either. The replacement show, Joyce told staff, will be “live and local”. That seems to rule out The Kyle & Jackie O Show which would be anything but local.
While it’s possible that the phrase is misdirection — perhaps a short-term show ahead of networking in K&J later in the year (a bad move, given the traction sacked hosts Jase Hawkins and Lauren Phillips gained when they took their show over to Nova while Kiis ran dead in Melbourne) — that’s not the impression that Joyce’s memo gives.
“The new show will be bold, entertaining and fast-moving with a renewed focus on energy and music.” As opposed to the current show which was presumably, in ARN’s view, timid, boring and slow.
One theory – from Game Changers Radio cohost Craig Bruce – is that this will be the new home of Kent “Smallzy” Small who left Nova earlier this year, and has been spotted in ARN’s offices.
At face value, it would appear that ARN is pursuing a worst-of-both-worlds strategy — the high cost of keeping Sandilands and Henderson without the benefits of monetising it across multiple markets.
There must be a more logical explanation. We’ll hear it on Wednesday afternoon.
The Lauren Joyce staff announcement:
Nothing would surprise me with this network. Seem to be on tilt with the dismal performance of K&J. It’s only going to get worse for them….