Radio: Stranger than fiction

Wouldn’t it be beaut if radio networks were like libraries, and the fiction section was clearly marked? Because it’s hard to work out which aisle Duncan Campbell was in on survey days.

I wonder whether ARN’s former Chief Content Officer actually believed half the stuff he said come ratings time. And let’s be honest, he’s not the only one.

But that’s another story.

To be fair, it was Campbell’s job to spin the results. And in the case of Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson, he did say he felt obliged to be optimistic. Of course he wasn’t going to get up there in public and say the show was cooked.

But this week, Campbell dropped the bombshell revelation that he knew right from the very first day – in fact probably the first ten minutes – that the Kyle and Jackie O Show was doomed to fail in Melbourne.

Instead, he publicly maintained an unwavering belief that it would succeed.

It was simply a matter, he said, of “getting Melbourne to fall in love with them.”

At what point do you stop trying to sell a fallacy?

It’s fascinating to compare Campbell’s quotes from then and now:

December 2023 (four months out from launch): “I think it will do well in Melbourne and we’ll execute it really well.”

July 2026 (The Quarter Hour podcast): “I was never a real fan of the networking, really.”

December 2024 (8 months after launch) “I believe we can turn it around.”

July 2026 (Game Changers Radio podcast): “Probably 10 minutes into the first show (I knew it would fail in Melbourne).”

April 2024 (2 weeks out from K and J Melbourne launch): “I think that I’m right in my assessment of the Sydney-Melbourne rivalry not being as big a deal as it once was.”

July 2026 (The Quarter Hour podcast): “I think they were a Sydney Breakfast show … that’s where they should have stayed.”

And now here we are. July 2026.

Campbell is no longer CCO. Kyle and Jackie O are no longer on KIIS. And the jobs and careers of hundreds of others have been lost, damaged or derailed in the tsunami of cost cutting that has followed.

At some point we’ve strayed from the fiction aisle into the horror section.   

Images supplied: ARN