Kyle Sandilands has once again managed to get his Ten bosses offside after he broke the news – and the embargo – that the network had picked up his pilot show Trial By Kyle for a full season next year.
Not that Sandilands appeared to thrilled at the news, describing Ten’s decision as “bullshit” and revealing he’d only done the pilot “for the money”.
The show, which is Australia’s answer to Judge Judy, was one of the successes of Ten’s recent ‘Pilot Week’ where it trialled eight shows to judge audience numbers and social media reaction.
Yesterday, Sandilands told his KIIS FM radio listeners that an eight-part run of the show would commence in February, in doing so, the 47-year-old breaking the network’s embargo on the news.
“Channel Ten did that pilot week shit and then I was the only one that got picked up,” Sandilands told KIIS listeners yesterday. “So now I’ve actually got to do something.”
“I don’t know why I did it. I did it thinking, ‘I’ll do this and take the money and that’ll be the end of it.’ And they’re like, ‘Good news, Kyle. Yours is the only show we’re picking up. Goes to air in February next year.’ I was like, ‘Ohhh’,” he said with displeasure.
“Doing this job and then having to go in there and film all that bullshit – it’s tough. I like to lay around resting. I get no rest,” he moaned.
It’s understood that Anna Heinrich, legal adviser to Sandilands in the pilot, will also return for the show.
And if that didn’t get Ten chiefs’ noses out of joint, his follow-up this morning definitely would have.
“I got a message saying that was a secret and I wasn’t to tell anyone,” Sandilands revealed of breaking the show’s embargo.
To which co-host, Jackie O, responded: “You can never keep a secret.”
Ten said in a statement this morning: “We get that keeping a secret is tricky but we are pretty good at it, so we will be announcing which shows made it to series from pilot week at the upfronts later this month.”
Back in June, Sandilands prematurely revealed plans for the show, angering Ten execs who’d not yet taken the pilot week initiative to market.
In 2009, Sandilands was sacked from Ten’s Australian Idol after airing his now infamous lie detector segment involving a teenage rape victim on his radio show.
Ten has announced a slew of new programming to commence in January, primarily to counter Seven’s cricket and Nine’s tennis. Also, to cover for the loss of of its summer trump card, the Big Bash League to rival Seven.
The network recently announced that I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, Chris & Julia’s Sunday Night Takeaway, Dancing with the Stars, Changing Rooms and Bachelor in Paradise would all commence in January.
To promote the shows, in early October Ten unveiled a nationwide consumer marketing campaign called ‘Always On’.
Network Ten’s head of marketing and social media, Brad Garbutt, said at the time: “What’s great about Ten’s programming strategy is that we’re now programming for 50 weeks of the year. The ‘Always On’ campaign is aimed to continually remind audiences and advertisers that we’re investing in creating premium entertainment content that gets them talking.”
