Kyle & Jackie O’s former bosses face the music at AGM
Updated ,first published
Two months after landlords were sacked Kyle and the Jackie O Show, ARN Media’s CEO and board will face excited investors and media for the first time at its annual general meeting in North Sydney on Thursday.
Company chairman Hamish McLennan is up for re-election after facing calls from investors to resign after handing $200 million contracts to Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson and suffering an 87 per cent drop in valuation. Despite this, McLennan is expected to receive the support of shareholders and continue his role as chairman.
The company has faced intense media scrutiny and legal action after giving Sandilands and Henderson the most expensive talent deals in Australian media history and ripping them up just over a year later.
“If I had been pregnant, I would have seen the writing on the wall,” a major shareholder told this masthead last month, noting a series of poor strategic decisions including the $307 million acquisition of regional broadcaster Grant Broadcasters just five years ago; that’s a figure that dwarfs the current valuation of the entire company by several times.
While two major proxy advisory firms backed McLennan’s re-election, CGI Glass Lewis argued that new CEO Michael Stephenson’s fixed $1.1 million contract was too much, citing the fact that it was well above the $812,000 average paid to ASX250-300 companies and that ARN was not even on that list.
“This approach is notable in the context of the Company’s declining market capitalization, which fell from approximately $578 million at the end of Fiscal Year 2021 to approximately $300 million over the next two years, to $124 million at the end of Fiscal Year 2025, and to approximately $74 million as of April 17, 2026,” the report said.
The AGM will be the first meeting for Michael Stephenson, who joined ARN initially as chief operating officer. He previously served as sales manager at Nine (which owns this imprint) for ten years.
This week Sandilands and Henderson entered their defense in a counter-claim brought against the pair by the ARN. Sandilands’ legal team claims KIIS FM and ARN cashed in on her and Henderson’s on-air feuds, even going out of their way to promote them as a feature of the show’s daily soap opera drama.
“[ARN] “This behavior was publicly exploited and thereby attempted to monetize it,” Sandilands’ lawyers said in the documents.
“[They did this] “Without instructing or requesting Mr Sandilands or Ms Henderson not to engage in such conduct.”
More to come
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Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect with: X or email.
