Who has the power?

Ok. Sorry, I’ve evaded this for long enough but I just can’t help myself any longer.
Kyle Sandilands is your classic car crash. Love him or hate him it’s hard to look away or ignore the latest sensationalist headline. I’ve avoided weighing in on this issue because frankly, I hate giving him air space of any kind.

However, this is a car crash in slo mo and we are watching the undoing of a shock jock not quite as smart and erudite as his predecessors. The truth is big advertisers are leaving fast and furiously in the wake of mass-consumer, social media-driven protests against Sandilands’ behaviour.

As of 2pm EAST yesterday former Austereo sponsors were extending the boycott into next year in no uncertain terms.;

We committed to not advertising with on any show (TV or radio) hosted by Kyle Sandilands in 2012. - Vodafone

Our very clear position remains that we are not and will not advertise on programmes hosted by him. - Coles

Ford won't be advertising with the Kyle & Jackie O show or other Austereo programs with which Kyle is involved at all going forward. Our action to withdraw that advertising was permanent. - Ford

There are many in the media, and no doubt the community at large, that feel this is a beat up. One of my colleagues, the first to shout own gratuitous disrespect of women with considerable volume, felt there was validity in one of his lines of defence – that as a media personality he was the victim of constant slander, yet his every utterance was subject to unending criticism.

There is something in that, yet there remains the strong scent of a cumulative effect. Sandilands has been insulting people for years - not just in John Laws, Alan Jones kind of way, but in a down home and dirty, seriously disgusting kind of way. We won’t go in to here all the examples although asking a young girl, who admitted she’d been raped, if that was her only sexual experience, was an incident that few could forget.

The question is at what point is enough, enough. When does his liberal, light-hearted banter become spurious slander? Should he get away with consistent degradation that’s passes as infotainment on today’s airwaves? Or is he just a scapecoat for the consumers’ un-assuageable appetite for this kind of stuff? Why else is Kyle and Jackie O the highest rating breakfast radio program in the country? It’s easy to blame sponsors, but what does that say about us?

As someone who’s very existence wields its own weird kind of power – the sponsor dollar – and in the wake of our forthcoming Bravery / Power 20 issue (nominations accepted until end of this week by the way) our question this week is this;

Who wields the Austereo power?
Answer our poll on the Australian Creative home page.