Mouthy Kyle “Deeply Offensive & Derogatory”: Watchdog

Hey Kyle, your comments were “deeply derogatory and offensive”AND you’re in breach of the Radio codes of practice.

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The Communications watchdog has given 2Day FM’s Kyle Sandilands a taste of his own medicine, branding his comments on the Kyle & Jackie O Show about News Ltd Journalist on 22nd November as offensive and amounted to a breach of the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice 2011.

Motormouth Sandilands branded News.com.au deputy editor Alison Stephenson a “little troll,” “a bullshit artist,” criticising her hair as “very 90s” and her blouse on his show last year. His remarks prompted outrage and led to advertisers including Vodafone, Telstra and the Good Guys dropping their sponsorship of Kyle and Jackie O show.

“You haven’t got that much titty to be having that low-cut a blouse. Watch your mouth or I’ll hunt you down,” he said.

A “fat slag” was also another remark that came from the smarmy Radio DJ’s mouth.

And it looks like Sandilands’ comments has landed his employer 2Day Fm in a whole lot of trouble with the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

“The Authority found the comments by Mr Sandilands deeply derogatory and offensive and, in all the circumstances, a licence condition is the appropriate response,” said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman.

ACMA has now begun “formal steps” to impose a second licence condition on 2DAY FM which would “prohibit it from broadcasting indecent content and content that demeans women or girls,” it said today.

If 2DAY-FM does not comply with its additional licence condition, ACMA may suspend or cancel the licence, it warned today.

In response to Kyle’s rant , 2DAY-FM introduced several safeguards, including: instructing Mr Sandilands and his management of the sort of remarks that are unacceptable and must not be repeated and extending the broadcast delay for the program from 10 seconds to 30 seconds

2Day FM also said it will be Installing a red light warning system in the Sydney (and Los Angeles) studio to notify announcers when content may be of concern.

However, this is not enough said ACMA. In 2010, the same program breached the equivalent indecency provision of the earlier version of the codes.

However, Austereo rejected ACMA decisions, saying ”2Day FM’s core audience is women, predominantly young women,” Southern Cross CEO Rhys Holleran said.

Holleran also branded the watchdog’s license conditions as unworkable, saying “ACMA has issued no guidance on the licence condition and in light of that, we consider the condition to be unworkable.”

”Our difficulty with the proposed licence condition is that terms such as ‘decency’, ‘demeaning’ and ‘undue emphasis on gender’ are broad and ambiguous and mean different things to different people.”

The ACMA appears to have ignored the steps which 2Day FM put in place, he added

“In a 10 year period in which 2Day FM has broadcast approximately 87,000 hours of programming, it has breached the Code only four times.”

2Day FM will have the opportunity to make representations to the ACMA on the proposed licence condition before a final decision is made.