Shock jock Kyle Sandilands has unleashed on his rivals this morning with evidence of what he’s calling “corporate espionage”.
Sandilands, who hosts Sydney’s highest-rating FM breakfast program on KIIS 106.5 with Jackie ‘O’ Henderson, has been teasing his “dossier” of dirt on his rivals this week, and he finally got down to it this morning, dishing on some — surprise — petty tactics commercial radio stations use to undermine their rivals.
In what was surely riveting radio for listeners who probably don’t follow the radio ratings war religiously, his first big reveal was that sales staff from Nova had emailed clients who advertise with the Kyle and Jackie O with clips of the program suggesting they might not want their brand associated with the KIIS 106.5 program.
Further infuriating Sandilands, staff from Southern Cross Austereo, which owns 2dayFM and Triple M have apparently been emailing publicists and agents for A-list stars in the US, also with clips from the program. But this time they’re using parts of the show where they’ve been rude about the stars in question to argue that celebs should not speak with Kyle and Jackie O.
But the thing that has really got Sandilands riled up is the owner of an email address using the user name of “vilekyle”, who is, according to Sandilands, packaging up clips of the show to send to journalists and the media “out of context” to try to damage him. Sandilands apparently had legal advice not to name the owner of the email account, but he issued a fairly round threat that the person responsible would be likely to lose their job if they were found out.
Sandilands and Henderson hosted the breakfast show on 2dayFM until the end of 2013, when they moved to KIIS 106.5. While Sandilands and his colleagues live and die by ratings and advertising accounts, airing industry dirty laundry to the audience is an interesting new engagement strategy. — Emily Watkins
“Full Moon Fever” – Kyle Petty and the Wind-breakers.