Kyle Sandilands: A Tragedy Set in Social Media
Posted Feb 05 in Opinion tagged ACMA, advertising standards, Kyle Sandilands, social media, socio-capitalisim
Kyle Sandilands, is in a very unfortunateposition. He is massively popular, yet widely disliked and no one wants to beassociated with him – especially those with something to sell.
We live in a world where most entertainment is commercially funded. Whether we watch TV, listen to the radio,or something else – the entertainment we choose is normally (at least in part) reliant on advertiser dollars.
Aparticular niche of commercially funded entertainment responds very well tocontroversy. I say niche, but I think it’s the majority. Think ofany reality TV shows you watch they are kept always kept alive and promoted via the latest‘controversy’. Overweight, washed upsinger has a hear attack whilst trying to loose weight – quick send out a pressrelease. Washed up singer is acting like a deranged bitch, send a press release. It’s been well documented elsewhere thatKyle Sandilands has built his career with controversial acts. The ‘controversy as media’ MO goes a littlesomething like this
- Kyle has an audience
- Kyle’s audience live normalevery day lives and they listen to him to spice up their otherwise ordinaryexistence
- Kyle therefore has lots of advertiserswho want to reach this audience
- Every time Kyle does somethingcontroversial (normally a euphemism for something cruel, unethical, immoral, orpotentially illegal) then Kyle’s audience is titillated and his audiencenumbers go up.
- Kyle gets more advertiserinterest and dollars
- Kyle is paid more, and adoptsthe moniker ‘King’
This is the way it’s always been – buffoonsaround the world have made a dollar resorting to the lowest common denominatorso they can get paid well. ‘King’ Kyle is just the latest. However, something has changed. The old model is now broken. What has changed things is (in this case the aptly named) social media. Between stages four and five, enter the new player ‘social media’. Social media will now step in and say ‘advertisers this guy is a buffoon and his behaviour is not acceptable. He is being cruel, immoral or possiblyillegal. Stop supporting this buffoon or I will encourage people to stop buying your products’. Interesting hey?
Therefore, the new ‘controversy as media’ chain looks like this
- Kyle has an audience
- Kyle’s audience live normalevery day lives and they listen to him to spice up their otherwise ordinaryexistence
- Kyle therefore has lots ofadvertisers who want to reach this audience
- Every time Kyle does somethingcontroversial (normally a euphemism for something cruel, unethical, immoral, orpotentially illegal) then Kyle’s audience is titillated and his audiencenumbers go up.
- Social media says ‘dearadvertisers this is completely unacceptable’
- Advertisers leave the show
- Kyle no longer makes money for his boss in the‘commercially funded entertainment’ model
- Kyle looses is job
Social media is providing a direct feedbackloop between the ‘ outraged listener’ and the advertiser and this is the newparadigm. Social media is giving people a direct voice to change what they want, and create their own standards (as an aside note don’t think ACMA the Commercial Radio Standards Board of Australia has ever doing anything to protect the standards of commercial radio so lets just leave them out of this debate as largely irrelevant).
I’m extremely glad ‘Karl’ will be off theairwaves soon. I asked advertisers to boycott his show some years ago, and it’s with interest I see Mat Baxter CEO of one of Australia’s largest media buying shops giving the opinion that ‘King’ Kyle will be forced to abdicate and willhave to leave Southern Cross Austero as his position there has become untenable(noncommercial). Power be to social media. Tim Burrows gives an accurate and well researched account of the role social media (Twitter in particular) played in ‘King’ Kyle’s latest downfall.
However, the story doesn’t end there. Forthose who are interested please consider the following:
a) who were the people on socialmedia who convinced the advertisers to stay away? In some instances it wasmedia professionals and academics – distant from Kyle’s audience itself. However,in other instances it was the community of the brand trying to actually sponsorthe show. For example when Jenny Craig tried to sponsor the show her communitylet her know that was a silly move it was instantly.
b) What happens next? A new buffoonwill come along to replace Karl. He’ll too will try and create controversy, buthe wont go as far as Kyle – he doesn’t want to get sacked. So he plays it safer. The masses who listen tothe new buffoon in Kyle’s place have a slightly more humane and less cruelstation to listen to. This on the face of it seems like a good thing, however, is commercial culture being held to ransom by keyboard activists (and if so is this a bad thing)??
c) Our advertisers the newcommunity standards arbitrators? This is an interesting one. Advertisersultimately have one agenda, shareholder value. Everything they do is ultimatelyabout satisfying their bottom line. Hence in a capitalist driven culture itmakes sense to have community standards dictated by a capitalist mandate (at least you know their agenda). However, are there other alternatives? What if we lived in a socio-capitalist world where the social good was given as much importance as the financial gain?Perhaps that’s what’s happening via social media?
It’s a complicated issue.
At the end of the day I’m just glad itappears very likely that Karl will be off the airwaves soon, and the world willbe just that little bit better, just that little bit nicer.
POSTCRIPT
This is a link to the session on ABC Radio ‘Sunday Nights with James O’Loghlin’
Fritz Bachen is a Consumer Psychologist and Founding Partner at Naked Communications. Fritz can be seen, read or heard at; The Gruen Transfer, ABC Radio (Sunday nights), Adnews columnist, as well as The Australian, Cleo, Mumbrella, Shop Till You Drop and so on. He speaks at numerous conferences on marketing, ideas, contemporary culture, and consumer behaviour. Fritz has degress in clinical psychology and commerce (marketing). A registered psychologist and has worked in private practice, forensic settings, advertising (Saatchi & Saatchi) and marketing consultancy (Added Value). He was also state under 12 chess champion on WA, and has a board game called The Analyst selling well in the Benelux countries.
Comments
Unknown
Feb 21st, 2012I done PSY/SOC 373 Research Methods, and finding jobs. i have no experience. and searching some useful content related to it and also jobs option. i like your post.i have one option that help me a lot to finding jobs in such a regarding fields. hope it's help you.Psychology.
Kate
Mar 13th, 2012Hey Fritz,
Just wanted to let you know that as of today 137 companies have now withdrawn. The petition is sitting on 34,250 http://www.change.org/petitions/2day-and-fox-fm-sponsors-cancel-advertising-until-kyle-sandilands-is-dumped-from-radio-vilekyle
Kyle has claimed in recent media that 'all the sponsors are coming back'. To my knowledge those who have willingly given permission for their ads to be used total 3.
Any others have had their ads used without their permission and needless to say that have not been happy at all when it has been pointed out to them that their ads are being aired on the program or used on the webpage!!
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