Jackie O Henderson sues ARN Media for eye-watering eight-figure sum after demise of the Kyle and Jackie O show

Jackie “Jackie O” Henderson is suing her former employer, ARN Media, “for at least $82,250,000”, and it’s clear that there are not two sides to this story but three — Henderson, Kyle Sandilands and ARN.

The enormous claim is equivalent to the unpaid portion of her 10-year, $100 million contract with ARN, which was axed by the company earlier this month.

The radio personality lodged the legal claim against the besieged company yesterday after the market close, according to a statement from ARN to the ASX.

Henderson follows Sandilands in launching legal action after the pair were sacked following an on-air spat during the February 20 broadcast of the Kyle and Jackie O Show.

ARN’s statement today detailed that Henderson will argue that she sent a “complaint letter” to Commonwealth Broadcasting Corporation, a subsidiary of ARN, which said she “cannot continue to work with Mr Kyle Sandilands”.

Henderson had complained about “psychosocial health and safety and bullying” from Sandilands on February 20 and before that, and that she was exercising or proposing to exercise workplace rights.

Her legal team said that the axing of her contract in that context was in contravention of the Fair Work Act. ARN disputes the claims.

It’s clear now that Henderson and Sandilands will be making very different arguments against their firings. Sandilands filed his lawsuit on the basis that his termination for breach of contract was invalid, and that there had been no such breach.

Sandilands previously said that the February 20 incident in which he publicly berated a visibly distressed Henderson was just another argument characteristic of the many “blues” they had had before.

His lawyers wrote in the court filing on his behalf, “The exchange was congruent with the style, tone and nature of the show and the robust character that (ARN) ‘desired’”.

In an earlier statement, Sandilands said, “Let me tell you what actually happened here. Jackie and I had a blue on air. That’s it. The kind of thing we’ve done a hundred times in 25 years.

“And ARN took the situation and decided to try and burn the place down. They sacked Jackie. They suspended me. They wouldn’t even let me pick up the phone to call her or anyone else on the show.”

With Henderson’s legal claims, it would seem that her legal team may disagree with how Sandilands has sought to frame the situation.

Through ARN’s characterisation of her claims, it would appear that Henderson’s team has argued that the radio network illegally terminated her contract after she complained about Sandilands’ “bullying” behaviour and that she was entitled through the Fair Work Act to be protected from adverse actions stemming from that complaint.

These are very different versions of the same story — Sandilands’ which has attempted to minimise the February 20 incident as another day at the office, and Henderson’s, which characterised it as serious enough for a formal complaint, for which she was then allegedly punished.

The outcome for both was the same — the ending of their show and the termination of their contracts.

When Henderson sent that complaint letter to ARN on March 3, she had already been off the air for a fortnight. After the February 20 broadcast, she never returned to the microphone.

The drama kicked off when Sandilands unleashed on his long-time radio partner after she attempted to link Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s Jeffrey Epstein woes with his astrology chart.

Sandilands told Henderson she was “off with the fairies” and went in on her about what he perceived to be her unacceptable work ethic. He added that “everyone” at the station was talking about it.

The now infamous eight-minute exchange saw Henderson defending herself against his attacks and making oblique references to her loyalty to him while he was engulfed in previous scandals.

Two weeks after her absence, the same day she sent her complaint letter, ARN released an extraordinary statement to the ASX which said it had terminated Henderson’s contract and had given Sandilands 14 days to “remedy” the supposed breach.

When the deadline passed, ARN axed its agreement with Sandilands too. At the time, he promised he would take the media business to court.

Outside the Federal Court in Sydney on Friday, Sandilands told the awaiting media pack, “I’m just happy that we can get in today and get the ball rolling. I just want to get back to work as quick as possible.

“I’ve got a family, I’ve got mortgages to pay like everyone else.”

ARN’s lawyer, Tom Blackburn, told the court that the likelihood of Sandilands returning to KIIS FM was “effectively nil”.

Sandilands and Henderson have been a formidable radio pair for a quarter of a century, equally beloved and reviled for a brand of broadcasting that was brash and controversial.

Sandilands, in particular, has in the past attracted scandal for the content of the show. This included a segment in which a 14-year-old child was subjected to a lie detector test about her sexual history, and it was revealed that she had been raped at 12.

Sandilands has also called a News Corp journalist a “fat slag” for writing an article which sourced from social media criticisms of one of his TV shows.

He disparaged disabled athletes when commenting on the Tokyo Paralympics, and said actor and comedian Magda Szubanski, whose father was a Polish Resistance fighter during World War II, would lose weight in a concentration camp.

The Kyle and Jackie O Show was also a frequent target of the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which had the power to investigate public complaints about breaches of the broadcast code of conduct.

In the middle of the contract drama, ACMA handed down its latest findings into a series of complaints which found several breaches throughout 2025.

ACMA imposed further conditions on ARN for any program to feature Sandilands or Henderson, and that non-adherence to those enforceable action could, in the worst case scenario, threaten the broadcaster’s licence.

Despite, or maybe because of, their many controversies, Sandilands and Henderson remained a popular media fixture in Sydney, their home market.

When ARN, under previous chief executive Ciaran Davis, signed their combined $200 million contract in late 2023, the plan was to leverage their Sydney wins and expand their show nationally.

It started with Melbourne in 2024 but they were immediately rejected by listeners in the Victorian capital unused to their aggressive style.

In response, ARN tinkered with the tone of the show to pare back the vulgarity but it wasn’t enough to win anyone over. If anything, it turned the relationship between Sandilands and Melbourne antagonistic as he railed against them for not listening to him.

During the last ratings period, the Kyle and Jackie O Show was ranked eighth in Melbourne, well below their predecessors in the KIIS FM breakfast timeslot, Jason Hawkins and Lauren Phillips, who had been shunted to make room for Sandilands and Henderson and who now present at a rival station.

The failure in Melbourne put a stop to ARN’s national expansion plans for the program, compounding the company’s financial position.

In its 2025 results, ARN posted a 23 per cent decline in underlying EBITDA and a 10 per cent drop in revenue which included a 16 per cent slump in metro advertising.

It has made hundreds of employees redundant in successive waves of retrenchments since it signed those contracts with Sandilands and Henderson.

Despite an initial uptick in its share price following the termination of Henderson’s contract, ARN’s market capitalisation has fallen to below $100 million since this brouhaha began.

It is currently worth $90.7 million, barely above the $82.25 million in damages sought by Henderson.