What Kyle does next; and doing shows away from your studio

Above: from the top of Mount Coot-Tha in Brisbane - specifically, from Nine Network’s carpark. The dish is Nine’s, pointing NNW; that’s the ABC’s transmitter and, behind it, TXA’s transmitter for Channel 10. Most of the commercial and community stations are on there too.

One half of the Kyle & Jackie O show, Kyle Sandilands, has accepted a settlement from former employer ARN - and announced his new media vehicle.

Kyle was looking for $85mn, but is to settle for $12mn (which is not nothing). He gets $3mn next month, and then $275,000 monthly until June 2029. He can’t work with other radio broadcasters until March 2027 (and they’re unlikely to want to touch him anyway). “Mr Sandilands and his related entities will not be providing services to ARN in any capacity going forward”, the stock market announcement clarifies, possibly for jittery brands who want to avoid any association with the shock jock, or as a peace offering to MFW.

But Sandilands will be able to do work online (“independent media opportunities,” as they’re known): and in an exclusive interview on the Game Changers Radio podcast (well worth a listen, by the way), he’s announced he’ll be doing an online subscription show (in audio and video) every morning between 6am-10am. Not just that: ARN will help promote it, to the tune of $1.5mn; and ARN will also trouser 19.9% of revenue (after an initial threshold).

It’s an astonishingly good deal for ARN - one that the company can afford, but also one with significant commercial upsides for them.

So he’s essentially been kicked off FM radio for the time being, and will be doing a live show online instead. I don’t want to call myself a radio futurologist or anything, but I proposed this very idea in October last year - which was roundly dismissed by commentators and podcasters everywhere. But - will his subscription service actually work?

The radio world is littered with people who left commercial radio, and believed their own hype enough to try and launch a subscription service. Here’s just one, from 2005. It’s fraught with difficulty - not least, the rights issues around playing music, which Sandilands says is going to be part of the show. Howard Stern was successful in his move from FM to satellite radio; but he was one channel in 150.

Sandilands says he needs 50,000 paid subscribers to cover costs. We don’t know the subscription fee he is planning, but if it’s a $4.99 subscription fee, that’s (AUD) $250,000. The show will also, he says, be ad free (though that doesn’t mean it won’t carry sponsorships or other brand activity).

Across all platforms, KIIS in Sydney and Melbourne had 1.1 million listeners each week for breakfast. Kyle’s show on KIIS had 96,000 online listeners a week. Would half of those pay to listen to Kyle instead? Would some of the 291,000 “listeners” to the podcast also pay up? (His investors apparently think that he could get 500,000 or even a million).

Would ARN’s iHeartRadio be used as a method to listen or watch, if ARN is to get 20% of the revenue? (Given the app is made in the US, is it even capable of a bespoke subscription product for a population smaller than that of Texas?)

Never short of a reason to get us all talking about him - I’ve been on Nine’s TODAY show twice over the last two days as a radio commentator (Thursday about ARN’s agreement and here’s a quick chat about Kyle from Friday morning) - Kyle has also professed a love for One Nation, the populist far-right hate-fuelled Australian political party that is mostly funded by millionaires. Excepting raw publicity, part of this might be a desire to get closer to those millionaires for funding for his new venture; part of it could be a realisation that right-leaning media seems to work better in Australia and other countries (George Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” being the kind of feature you could imagine on 2GB). It strikes me that the kind of brands who’d spend money with someone like Kyle are similar brands to those who would want to fund One Nation.

The ACMA says that only 8% of Australians listen to streaming radio. Will Sandilands be the person to change all that? We’ll have to wait and see.

Classifieds

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There’s stats, and there’s the UK’s DAB station WaveUp Radio, which broadcasts on the East London and Essex DAB multiplex. The website, when I visited, claimed in its footer that it’s “the most popular radio station in the UK” (it isn’t); it published an address of “123 Diversity Street, London” (which doesn’t exist). And it has a listener count - proudly claiming that you are listener “20,827” , which almost instantly changes to “20,346”, and then it “slowly and naturally” goes up or down by a random number up to 6, every four seconds. That’s all worked out by the code in the website, below, which is called fakeCounting. At least the name of the function is honest. (20,000 would be an impressive concurrent audience number, were it true).

The station, with DSP licence DP105936BA/1, is owned by Primevortex Holdings Ltd, and run by Samuel Akoto BSc (Hons), who lives in Brentwood. UK company law requires an truthful address, VAT number and other things on websites. Contacted for comment, Akoto tells me that the website designer made up the address and the “most popular” claim, but that the “listener count” had “gone into error mode”. That, too, isn’t true.

• One of the things I speak about in radio conferences is the opportunity to get out of the radio studio (there’s research backing up a desire from your listeners to personally connect with radio personalities). Radioland reader Buzz points me to CBC in Canada, who periodically do what they call a “walking show” - a live show walking through a particular neighbourhood. Here’s a video of one of them - walking through a part of Evanston AB, hit by a hailstorm a while ago. Really nice idea.

  • Another example - Jim Hawkins, who used to be on BBC Radio Shropshire before budget cuts meant the end of the show, regularly sat on a bench in a local park, and recorded stories to air the next day. (The benefit of doing something pre-recorded is that it’s technically easier: but also you can give your guests enough time to tell their families and friends that they will be on the radio.) He now does this in his Hello You podcast.

• AM deathwatch: BBC Radio 5 Live is due to turn off its AM transmitter network (23 transmitters across the UK) by December 2027. The station is beginning to turn transmitters off at the end of next month - the first to go are Redruth in Cornwall, and Folkestone in Kent.

• Public radio deathwatch:

  • In the UK, the BBC has announced 550 job cuts, which will particularly impact BBC Radio 4 (news/talk). The World Tonight will go, to be replaced by Newshour from the BBC World Service (a service that the BBC wants the government to wholly pay for). The Today Programme will lose a presenter, leaving “just” four (three more than LBC’s Nick Ferrari, two more than Times Radio). Some TV shows will go. The cuts announced are only half the cuts we’re going to get this year. And, should you want fresh evidence of how appalling the BBC’s HR team is, try reading this. The world’s worst.
  • In Belgium, RTBF JAM (alternative, new music) is to come off DAB+ in July. You’ll be able to listen on RTBF Auvio, the broadcaster’s proprietary app.
  • In Germany, MDR Klassik (classical) is to come off DAB+ in October. It’s part of a government ruling requiring public radio to reduce the number of channels it transmits. The Leipzig station will be replaced on DAB+ by the public station BR Klassik from Munich.
  • In Australia, the far-right leader of One Nation, Pauline Hanson, made a speech where she announced she would close the SBS (“there’s no need for it any more”), and make the ABC a subscription service in most parts of the country. She’s not given any further details; I’d suspect it’s because she’s not bright enough to have any.

• I put Podnews into video on Friday, since I had a bit of time to fiddle about. What I’d like to do is to automate the on-screen graphics; a typical Podnews story (here’s the same thing in text form) is a paragraph with a link, the text of which doubles as the headline. What I’d quite like to do is: a) make a raw video version; b) do a transcript; c) compare with the original for links and headlines; e) automatically overlay timed headlines and a screengrab of the story using ffmpeg or something. Has anyone attempted this, or something similar? I’d guessing there must be some software somewhere that automatically adds overlays, etc - I know the World Cup overlays are all just XML-based stuff. Can anyone point me anywhere?

Where I am speaking next

• Radiodays Asia, Jakarta Indonesia (Sep 1-3) - I’ll be keynoting on radio’s international trends and its future
• Podcast Movement NYC, New York City (Sep 14-18)

Supporters

Thank you to the supporters below, plus Dafydd Furnham, Marty from New Yawk, Gavin Watson, Greg Strassell, Sam Phelps, Richard Hilton, Emma Gibbs, Jocelyn Abbey and James Masterton for being regular supporters.

If you’d like to support my work in any way, you can BuyMeACoffee - become a member to give regularly or just give a one-off coffee, or five. Here’s where to do that.

There’s a podcast version of this newsletter if you prefer that. I’m on Mastodon as @james@bne.social if you’re there too. And my website has more detail about who I am, and what I do, and whether I can help you further.

Selected bits from Radioland are in RadioInfo in Australia, and RAIN News in the US
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