There’s clearly good money in playing the offensive buffoon after Kyle Sandilands revealed to his KISS FM listeners his annual take home pay for his radio work alone was “more than $3 million”.
On his program yesterday, Sandilands was being quizzed by Channel Nine’s Ben Fordham who goaded him into revealing the salary he was paid by his ARN bosses.
“Kyle how much money do you earn?” Fordham asked. “Is it between $1 million and $2 million?”
Sandilands responded with: “It’s way more than that” before finally revealing he earned “more than $3 million” annually.
And never one for disingenuity, Sandilands added that was just for his radio work. “I own businesses – coconut water… I make a fortune off that shit,” he added.
Fordham then labelled the coconut water craze a “scam”.
“Stop saying scam! That’s the A Current Affair in you,” Sandilands bit back.
However, Sandilands’ revelations of his $60,000 a week gig still aren’t a patch on Australia’s highest paid announcer, Macquarie Radio’s Alan Jones, who’s reported to be on an annual retainer alone of $4.5 million let alone his sponsorship, advertising and speaking duties.
Interestingly, it was Sandilands’ own boss, ARN’s national content director, Duncan Campbell, who recently told B&T that the reason that Aussie radio hosts were paid so much was due to a dearth of local and upcoming talent.
“There’s just no one there when it comes to new radio talent and so these presenters command big dollars and they can do that because there’s no one else coming up behind them,” Campbell revealed.
“You only need read the numbers (salaries) reported for the likes of Hamish and Andy, Kyle and Jackie O, the likes of Eddie McGuire; it’s all indicative of the fact that there isn’t a pipeline that’s full of the next talent coming up and that’s a challenge for us as an industry. Yes, we need to create more shows, bring in new talent, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.
