Richard Stubbs and the Kyle & Jackie O prediction that came true

It’s said that hindsight is 20-20 vision. In other words, the phenomenon of being able to see things more clearly after they’ve happened.

Around this time last year, there was a big, juicy radio rumour doing the rounds: KIIS FM’s The Kyle & Jackie O Show was going to be networked from Sydney into Melbourne.

But a rumour was all it was at that stage. So, ARN’s Chief Content Officer Duncan Campbell was asked if there was anything in it.

It’s interesting now to read what he said back then.

Recalling the bold move three decades ago to network the Richard Stubbs Breakfast Show from Triple M Melbourne to Sydney, Campbell said “The risk is that you import a show (where) all the nuances are known in one market but not known in the other. You couldn’t tell the difference between where Richard was broadcasting from, but the Sydney audience weren’t familiar with the quirkiness or the nuances of the show.”

Radio Today also quizzed Stubbs himself about the rumour, asking whether he thought listeners down south might embrace the Sydney duo.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Stubbs had a crystal ball.

Flagging a potential problem, he eerily – and, as it turns out, accurately – predicted the future.

In August last year, Stubbs pondered “How do you program (a breakfast show) when one market loves it, but the other market doesn’t?”

“What happens if Sydney loves the program in the surveys, but Melbourne doesn’t? What are you going to tweak to make Melbourne like it, while making Sydney still like it?”

This is indeed how ARN’s multi-million dollar gamble has so far played out, and the dilemma the network now faces today.

In April this year, Kyle and Jackie O exploded onto the Melbourne airwaves in a no-holds-barred, X-rated frenzy.

As we now know, several surveys in, Melbourne hasn’t yet embraced the show, and those tweaks have already been made.

“The show was overly-sexualised,” Campbell recently said in a Radio Today article post GfK Survey 6. “Kyle’s realised that, and we’ve made the change there, which is a positive.”

“The graphic sexual content’s gone. But it will take time for the audience to pick up on that perceptually and change.”

As Stubbs himself said, support at the top of the chain is crucial to the success of any networked radio show.

“To be fair, I wasn’t the juggernaut that Kyle and Jackie O are,”  Stubbs told this publication in August last year. “The power of that brand is enormous and can’t be underestimated.”

It’s the oft-asked question: How important is localism in cap city breakfast radio?

Stubbs noted that we, as a society, are more ‘global’ than we were thirty years ago, and less parochial. It’s something which – in the longer term – could work in K & J’s favour.

But that’s merely one of many questions surrounding radio’s most talked about networking gamble. Here are a few others:

Has the shock entry to the Melbourne market done long term damage to K & J’s chances of success?

Will Melbourne audiences who found their arrival on the scene too jarring give them a second chance?

What if Melbourne DOES warm to them, but ratings in Sydney drop?

And when do the bean counters start to hover?