I gave Kyle and Jackie O their big break. They were superb, but I know why they imploded

March 8, 2026 — 5:00am

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For 10 years from 2004, Craig Bruce worked with Kyle and Jackie O – whose long on-air partnership completely ruptured last week after nigh on three decades. I spoke to him on Friday.

Fitz: Craig, thank you for your time. I know you go back a long way with the media pair of the moment, and were important to their career. How did you come across them?

CB: Back in August 2004, Judith Lucy had replaced Wendy Harmer on breakfast at 2DayFM and the show was failing badly. The head of content at Austereo said to me, “Go up Sydney. You’ve got 12 weeks to tell me if Judith can make it or not, and if she can’t, then you’re going to have to find a replacement.” So I went up, and it was pretty clear that Judith wasn’t quite the right fit, so the step then was to go, “OK, well, how do we find a show that can replace her and can do the breakfast show?” We looked around. One afternoon I heard a grab of Kyle and Jackie O talking about relationships. They had that chemistry that they’ve become famous for. I thought, “That’s the show. Let’s take a chance on these guys.” They started breakfast the next year, and the rest is history.

Fitz: For those of us who never listened to them, but were occasionally aware of them as a discordant trumpet blaring out from the bleachers, can you explain? What did they have that was just so successful? We’d heard of people with million-dollar contracts, and even some with $5 million contracts, like Alan Jones. But these two pulled in a $200 million contract.

CB: They are both highly, highly skilled. And together, at their best, they were superb. Look, in this day and age, “engagement and enragement” is really at the heart of every media outlet and we’re all looking for clickbait and we’re all looking for someone to press on a link, open and engage. But these guys understood that in ways that were just instinctive and innate, 20 years ahead of their time. They got engagement and enragement well ahead of anyone in social media.

Fitz: How did that translate in the day to day?

CB: In my early days with the show, the thing that stood out for me was that Jackie would walk into our planning meetings on a Monday and she would say, “What are we going to do to get noticed this week?” And she would look all of us in the eye and she expected an answer. You’d better have one. And look, sometimes those answers were compelling radio and other times we missed the mark, and that’s where, I guess the debate around “love-them-or-hate-them” comes from. But they understood that Sydney is a big market. “We’re going to need to make noise, to do more than just turn up and put a standard radio show together.”

Fitz: You guys certainly got the enragement part, right! I mean, the endless headlines. The outrages!

CB: Sure, and people like you, who didn’t listen to the show, think that it’s just about the headlines which is: “Kyle has said something offensive” – and he certainly had a habit of doing that. But he’s also really warm and engaging and funny and soft, and certainly self-deprecating. He’s not a one-dimensional character. He’s not a shock jock all the time.

Fitz: That is fascinating. My wife was working with Jackie on TV in 2000, when she mentioned that she was looking for an on-air radio partner to replace her ex-husband – nicknamed “Ugly Phil” – and said, “There’s this guy, Kyle Sandilands, they want me to give a try.” Ms O was an established media identity when they started, while Kyle was more anonymous than a wrong number. That lends to the view that she was John Lennon, and he was Ringo Starr, even though, over the years he was the one at the base of so many of the headlines that were generated.

Jackie O enabled the misogyny of Kyle Sandilands. Inevitably, he turned on her

Jacqueline MaleyColumnist and senior journalist

Columnist and senior journalist

CB: [Laughing.] They were Lennon and McCartney! They need each other, and they had this remarkable ability to make each other better on air. I now coach a lot of radio shows, and one of the first things I will say to them is “go and watch Kyle and Jackie on the air. Don’t listen to them. Watch their clips and watch their eye contact with each other.” They are 100 per cent laser-focused on each other and what is being said. They are brilliant conversationalists.

Fitz: They used to be. And that certainly was a part of Kyle’s point in the blowup: “You, Jackie used to be laser-focused, but you ain’t focused lately”, which he said with unforgivable force.

CB: I can only go on my experience with them, but my view is that they were really, really tired. And I think time has done a number on them. I think spending 25 years in a small room together took its toll.

Fitz: No doubt. But to return to the laser focus thing. You do a very successful podcast called Game Changers Radio on media matters. Let’s just say next week, I’m your guest co-host, and we are to discuss this media earthquake called Kyle and Jackie O. Let’s say I open with, “The really interesting thing, Craig, is that Jackie was born in late January! She is an Aquarius. And I’m telling you that with Saturn rising on a blood moon, Aquarians who work for 25 years with somebody in a small room, always come apart. Aquarians are just like that! They turn, and call the cops!” Look, I hate to say anything to defend Kyle, but it would surely be legitimate for you to say to me, quietly, “Listen, Big Pete, you are kidding. There are 100 angles to this story on Kyle and Jackie O. You have picked the 101st and dullest. Pull your head in, get your mind on the game.” Would it be legitimate for you to say that, quietly?

CB: You’re absolutely right. But the problem is that over the years they have had plenty of those moments on the air where Kyle has pulled Jackie up and vice versa on the little quirks and things that make them, you know, drive each other crazy, and they are funny moments on the radio, and the audience play along, and we all move on and, you know … Kumbaya. But for whatever reason, something has broken with the relationship and that kind of back and forth ended, really badly. Something else is going on. I don’t know what it is.

Fitz: You’re vastly experienced in the media. Let’s just say that 2DayFM or one of the FM stations calls you now and says, “Craig, Kyle needs a gig. We want to take a risk. How much money is it worth risking on him, as an annual salary?” Until recently, the market said he was worth $10 million a year. What’s he worth now?

CB: If it was only Sydney, you would definitely roll that dice, but not nationally, and certainly not into Melbourne. There’s an activist group, “Mad F—ing Witches”, that have done enormous damage, so he’d be hard to sell to advertisers. National brands were already sending briefs to radio companies around Australia with specific direction that nothing can go through Kyle and Jackie O.

CB: Peter, there is no world now, where radio as a category can afford to pay two people $10 million each a year for one show. That was going to end in tears anyway. Let’s be clear on that. Who knows what things will look like after 10 years when the contract was due to finish, in 2034? But it’s fracturing by the moment, now, into thousands of tiny shards of glass.

Fitz: Give me a number! What would the market say he’s worth annually now?

CB: [After long discussion, back and forth.] As a base, enough to pay for his son Otto’s school fees. And then a certain share of the revenue. But you would not risk anything remotely close to what he’s been on. And you’d need a commitment from him to tone it down.

Fitz: But isn’t that the other problem? I over-quote the great media impresario Peter Meakin, once saying to me, “Sam Newman is the most compelling figure in media, because he’s dangerous. People lean in, never knowing what he’s going to say next.” If you get Kyle to tone it down, the risk is he’s no longer Kyle, and whatever it is he had, is gone. And if Jackie O goes the legal route, it may that part of his schtick – bullying anyone on the show – will be proven to be flat-out illegal under workplace safety laws?

CB: Yeah, we had those very conversations with our previous owners Village Roadshow. They said, “We’ve got our Ned Kelly, and every market needs one, so let Kyle be Kyle.” So I wouldn’t want a benign, safe, boring version of Kyle. I don’t think he has to be that. But I think there’s a line that he mustn’t cross, and I think that could be trained out of him.

Fitz: Jackie O has also taken a serious hit. On the one hand, for some she’s the heroine, the strong woman who said, “I am not taking your shit any more.” On the other, many people – and no one more brilliantly than my colleague Jacqueline Maley – have said, more or less, “Oh, really? You enabled him for decades, stood by while he monstered women from one end of the country to the other, and never did anything. But once Kyle turned his guns on you, you called the cops. This is hypocritical, outrageous.” What do you think of that?

CB: I think it’s unfair. Jackie is making a stand now for whatever reason. And I guess you’ve got to be in that relationship, to understand how it works. But for Jackie, 80 per cent of it was fun and joyous and there were parts of that relationship that she obviously would have struggled with, like we all did. There were days when I would look and go, “Do I really want to be around this?” But that’s, I guess, a deal you do with the devil. And I don’t think it’s fair just to say, “Hey, look, Jackie has to represent all women.”

Fitz: By any measure, however, some of the stuff was demeaning to women. Early on into their Melbourne foray, they put to air some audio of staff members urinating, and everyone had to guess which widdle was whose. Seriously?

CB: That’s a whole separate discussion, Peter. I could not believe how far they had fallen in terms of the explicit nature of the content. And Kyle is a smart radio guy, but the decisions they made through that launch period into Melbourne through hubris were just incredible. This idea that “I’m not interested in the Melbourne audience, and you’re going to get what you’ve given,” it was a disaster from day one. It was unlistenable, to be honest. There’s no coming back for them in Melbourne. For the rest, for both of them, we’ll see.

Fitz: Thank you again for your time, sagacity and serious insight. I’ll bet you’re a Pisces!

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Five Minutes with Fitz

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