Kyle Sandilands is not expected to return to the airwaves for Austereo. That’s the assessment in Sydney radio circles where insiders say that his latest tasteless joke - where he suggested that comedian Magda Szubanski, whose father fought in the Polish resistance, could lose more weight if she were in a concentration camp - will see the network blackbanned by advertisers should he return.
Sandilands has again demonstrated that he’s achieved world’s best practice in his chosen field of stupidity with his “apology” over the remarks - a classic case of “if people were offended by what I said then I’m sorry.”
His comments show how Sandilands is ill-equipped to recognise poor behaviour on his own part and put his hand up - regarding the outrage he causes as some external event that simply happens to him, where the preciousness of the community turns him into a martyr.
I wrote a few weeks ago that while Sandilands is no free speech martyr, calls for government-backed intervention or control over his conduct, through a body such as ACMA, are off the mark in an open society such as ours.
What’s happening now though is that market forces might take care of him instead. Channel Ten has already punted him from Idol. And Austereo will be terrified by two things - the probably blanket rejection by advertisers of any program containing him, and the fact that Kyle and Jackie O’s audience, while having a high tolerance for stupidity, might draw the line at Nazi gags about the attempted extermination of an entire race, particularly when the gags involve one of our most beloved and talented comedians.
It doesn’t say much about the ability of Austereo to keep him on a shorter leash, given its vaunted introduction of a seven-second delay, which nobody saw fit to implement yesterday.
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