Australia’s highest-paid radio duo could lose $3 million each in bonuses as their network grapples with significant revenue decline.

In the second year of their record-setting $100-million 10-year contracts, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson’s projected bonuses are said to have taken a large hit in line with the decline in revenue posted in radio network ARN’s latest financial results.

On Wednesday ARN released its half-yearly results revealing metro radio revenue had fallen by close to $10 million year-on-year.

The drop, from $85.24 million to $75.26 million, represents a 12 per cent drop.

A large slice of Sandilands and Henderson’s salaries are linked to company revenue, advertising, company shares and ARN’s financial results.

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson in 2025. Picture: Instagram

ARN CEO Ciaran Davis this week said “KIIS is underperforming” in the Melbourne market.
With ARN taking a hit in both the first halves of 2024 and 2025, sources claim Sandilands’ and Henderson’s pay packets will have been significantly lightened.

On Thursday radio pundits claimed the duo might be lucky to take home $7 million each this year after bonuses are counted representing a hefty cut to the duo’s salaries.

The cut could be as much as $3 million each on the duo’s widely promoted $10-million-each annual contracts.

One radio insider maintained it was difficult to assess the precise financial hit to the duo’s bottom-lines given the complicated “multi-layered” contract structures and vagaries associated with determining star salaries.

Popular GOLD/WS FM breakfast hosts Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones will be shifted to drive next year.

They were bumped to make way for Melbourne-based Brit Christian O’Connell, who recently hired former Nine star Alex Cullen.
Addressing ARN, CEO Ciaran Davis played down the “audience challenges” that have impacted the duo’s cut-through in Melbourne.

He merely said “KIIS is underperforming”.

Conversely he only briefly talked-up the GOLD radio network’s stronger performance but barely addressed the decision to move Sydney stars Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones from the GOLD/WS FM breakfast shift to drive next year to make way for Melbourne-based Brit Christian O’Connell.

ARN didn’t respond when approached for comment on the impact to Sandilands and Henderson’s pay packets.

ALLY LANGDON’S HUNGER FOR SUCCESS

“I’m a bloody reporter not a TV sex symbol” 30-year-old founding host of A Current Affair, Mike Willesee, railed in the early seventies following the launch of his agenda-setting TV show.

Five decades on it’s a sentiment Willesee’s daughter-in-law Allison Langdon, current host of the program, has embraced following her appointment as anchor of Nine’s weeknight tabloid news program.

Having replaced trusted anchorwoman Tracy Grimshaw in the role in January 2023, Langdon, who is married to Willesee’s namesake son Mike Jr, quickly began pulling out the stops to lift the flagging program’s ratings and broaden its audience appeal.

A Current Affair host Allison Langdon. Picture: Richard Dobson
While some suspect she has done so partially to preserve her admired father-in-law’s legacy (Willesee also created, produced and sold the program to Nine’s proprietor Sir Frank Packer from 1971 to 1973), an enthusiastic Langdon has, from day one, asserted herself behind the scenes in the program’s newsroom where, insiders claim, she has been feverishly pitching ideas, and driving the news agenda.

She has also candidly and freely been giving her opinion on the work of production staff while promoting the view that after 53 years the program remains “iconic”.

Colleagues past and present describe Langdon as a “cheerleader” for the program and a keen mentor of young talent.

They also say she is “an alpha” and a “a strong character”, who is “hungry for success” and eager to assert A Current Affair’s (ACA) dominance over Nine’s higher rating National Nine News, it’s more prestigious and higher rating Sunday night counterpart 60 Minutes and Nine’s family friendly though low rating breakfast show Today, her old weekday stomping ground.

“She’s a workaholic with high standards that she expects others to adapt and maintain,” one Nine colleague said during the week, adding that ego essentially drives Langdon as it did her father-in-law and most of the program’s most successful former hosts including Jana Wendt, Ray Martin and Mike Munro.

Langdon’s father-in-law is legendary veteran journalist and ACA founder, the late Mike Willesee who passed away in 2019.

Langdon is married to Willesee son and namesake Mike Willesee.
In Fiona Dear, executive producer (EP) of ACA for the first 18 months of Langdon’s tenure, Langdon is said to have found an trusted ally and sounding board.

That didn’t change when Dear was promoted, becoming Nine’s director of news and current affairs in May 2024, this despite Dear having to hand the reins of her cherished program, her baby, to a successor, and retire from wrangling the program’s – and one of the network’s – fastest and most powerful rising stars, Langdon.

For reasons best known to herself, rather than promote from within her own team at ACA, Dear tapped the EP of daytime news in the Sydney newsroom, Amy McCarthy, an excellent live news producer but a woman regarded internally with current affairs program as an outsider who could find managing some of the personalities and dynamics within ACA’s notoriously cliquey unit challenging.

Langdon is said to have found an trusted ally and sounding board in former ACA executive producer Fiona Dear.

Dear later appointed Amy McCarthy to the role after she was promoted to another senior role.
Last week, after 14 months in the role, McCarthy suddenly resigned her post and accepted a transfer back to Nine news’ production ranks.

The catalyst for McCarthy’s notably gracious resignation, or so it was publicly framed, was internal backlash from within the ACA unit arising from McCarthy’s largely inoffensive social media posts from the August 3 Logie Awards.

In one post she informed her Facebook “friends” of her plans to get “drunk” at the Logies.

In a second, she offered up her considered view on the enduring appeal of rocker Jimmy Barnes who, she enthused, “deserves a spot on the grid! “ before adding the hashtag

#wouldstilldohim. (Barnes on Wednesday told a radio station he viewed the comments as “pretty harmless”.)

A Current Affairs EP Amy McCarthy posts during the Logies 2025
For Dear, McCarthy’s resignation, encouraged though it may have been, presents a series of looming issues chief among which is finding a replacement for McCarthy.

With a forthright and opinionated host and brand ambassador in Langdon, choosing the right EP promises to be no picnic for Dear.

Any dreams an invested Langdon may harbour for her father-in-law’s – and her own – legacy are tied to the appointment.

As legendary director of Nine’s news and current affairs Peter Meakin sees it, the role of ACA EP is “vital” to the program’s success and in previous decades was every bit as critical as that of program host.

Former Nine’s news and current affairs boss Peter Meakin said the role of an executive producer is a “big job”. Picture: John Feder
Meakin was a producer on Willesee’s A Current Affair in the seventies before having oversight of the appointments of Wendt, Martin and Munro as ACA hosts at Nine in the decades that followed.

“The role of EP, in my experience, was always one of undiluted joy but its both a political and an editorial role and at the end of the day the EP answers for all the content and also has to deal with the host while reading the public’s taste and dealing with the program’s promotion and marketing,” he said. “It’s a big job.”

Another ex Nine news veteran put it in plainer terms.

“None of them – not Willesee, Wendt, Martin, Munro or Grimshaw – drove the story or policy agenda of the show. They just didn’t. It’s fallacy to suggest otherwise. If Allison, of whom I’m a fan, has some idea or plan to take more charge on program direction or matters beyond her own important interviews, then I would advise sensible caution. It is fraught with dangers.”

FIELD’S WIGGLE DYNASTY UNDER FIRE

The incessantly sunny reputation of Former Cleo Bachelor of the Year Anthony Field, aka the Blue Wiggle, took a hit this week when details of former Wiggles CEO Luke O’Neill’s unfair dismissal case hit the headlines.

O’Neill, who was sacked two years after joining the kids entertainment company, in May, alleges his dismissal was unfair and came without prior warning, adverse feedback or bonuses that were owed to him.

He has launched legal action in the Federal Court against Field, The Wiggles Pty Ltd and the group’s lawyer Matthew Salgo.

Former Cleo Bachelor of the Year Anthony Field, aka the Blue Wiggle.

Former The Wiggles chief executive Luke O’Neill has launched Federal Court action against the popular children’s entertainment group. Picture: Supplied
The Wiggles say the claim will be defended, but have declined to comment further on O’Neill’s allegations.

O’Neill’s suit reveals the dynastic reach of the Field family within the group.

The Blue Wiggle, an older brother Paul and a third brother initially launched the children’s act out of the ashes of struggling nineties band The Cockroaches.

Field’s brother later departed the company along with fellow original Wiggles Greg Page, Jeff Fatt and Murray Cook, the popular original members of the skivvy-wearing troupe.

Today the Blue Wiggle’s daughter Lucia has joined the act and so too has a nephew Luke in the backstage role as general manager commercial, while another nephew was hired for a forthcoming album and Lucia’s boyfriend for an unidentified role.

Making most interesting reading was O’Neill’s disclosure that in 2023 the group made just $2 million.

Field’s daughter Lucia has followed her dad’s footsteps becoming the second Blue Wiggle. Picture: Sam Ruttyn
In their heyday, from about 2005 to 2009, The Wiggles were earning huge money. In 2007/2008 and 2009 their estimated gross income – with just four leading players in the group – was put at $45 million putting them among the top-earning entertainers in Australia.

The loss of a valuable association with Disney, the global recession, Covid, the departure of Emma “Yellow Wiggle” Watkins and some swept-under-the-rug Wiggly divorces have taken their toll though.

Which is perhaps why last original Wiggle and major shareholder Anthony Field was talking in 2023 of selling the children’s group or buying a lottery ticket to raise the capital to and buy back Sydney NRL team Balmain – an idea the club quickly panned as “fanciful and unrealistic”.

RED CARPET COUPLE RAISE EYEBROWS

Our spies were unimpressed when loved up Living Black host Karla Grant and her boyfriend, former MAFS contestant Nasser Sultan, appeared to push into a long queue of parents and kids who lined up outside Hoyts at the Entertainment Quarter in Moore Park last weekend to see children’s film Kangaroo.

Nasser Sultan and Karla Grant pose at the premiere of Kangaroo at the Hoyts Entertainment Quarter after they were spied pushing into a long queue of people lined up to go in. Picture: Don Arnold/WireImage
Grant, ex of Stan Grant, recently confirmed her relationship with Sultan.

The couple met in 2021 and apparently bonded over a shared love of movies and theatre.

Nasser Sultan and girlfriend Karla Grant love a red carpet launch.

The pair has made their way to a host of red carpet events since going public with their relationship. Picture: Don Arnold/WireImage
A quick search through recent opening night photo galleries confirms this and shows the unlikely pair have become regular red carpet fixtures, giving Richard Wilkins and son Christian a run for their money.

Among the opening night carpets they’ve been spotted on in recent months have been those at Peter and The Starcatcher at the Capitol Theatre in February, Les Miserables Arena Spectacular in May, Cats at the Theatre Royal in June, the Sydney Film Festival closing night that same month and The 39 Steps at the Opera House earlier this month.

Having conquered carpets we look forward to reporting the couple have mastered queue etiquette.