Ben Lee suggests shock jocks host Triple J Hottest 100. No, not quite

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Ben Lee suggests shock jocks host Triple J Hottest 100. No, not quite

19 July 2025

The shock jocks in question are Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, who host a show — The Kyle and Jackie O Show — on a Sydney based commercial Australian radio station. The pair, especially Sandilands, often find themselves in hot water, on account of inappropriate and offensive comments made on air.

Last Wednesday, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article making the claim Australian musician Ben Lee had suggested Kyle and Jackie O host Triple J’s annual Hottest 100 countdown.

Triple J is a non-commerical Australian radio station with a focus on broadcasting new and independent local music, but mixed with non-Australian indie music. The Hottest 100 charts listeners’ favourite songs of the previous calendar year, regardless of country of origin.

But next Saturday, 26 July, Triple J will broadcast a one-off Hottest 100 of listener’s all-time favourite Australian only songs, as part of their fiftieth birthday celebrations.

In response to the Herald article, Lee posted a clarification on his Instagram page, saying Triple J’s Hottest 100 countdown, in its present format, should be broadcast by a commercial station. The jays, Lee explains, as a government funded station, should only support Australian music.

What I’m saying is let commercial radio handle servicing multi-national major labels — that’s their job. Triple J is taxpayer funded and I think those funds would be better used almost exclusively supporting Australian artists and culture.

I get where Lee is coming from here.

But the Hottest 100 is a draw card event for the jays, and likely introduces new listeners to the station, who in turn go on to hear the station’s predominately Australian music programming. On the other hand, as Lilya Murray, writing for Arc, a UNSW student publication, points out, representation of Australian artists in the Hottest 100, has been declining in recent years:

In 2024, only 29 Australian artists featured in the Hottest 100. This was a significant drop from 2023, which featured 52 local artists, and 57 from 2022.

Triple J has a mandate to broadcast a minimum of forty-percent Australian music, though the station claimed in 2019 they played closer to sixty-percent. Why then would fewer Australian musicians be featuring in the annual countdowns?

One suggestion here is that many Hottest 100 voters are not regular Triple J listeners, and are voting up music they’ve heard elsewhere. But I’m not sure you can stop people voting for non-Australian music, unless maybe it wasn’t aired on Triple J in the first place. After all, the Hottest 100 is meant to be a poll of Triple J listeners, not other stations.

But I doubt a one-hundred percent focus on local music, both played by Triple J, and included in the countdown, is the answer either. I’ve always enjoyed the jay’s mix of new and independent, and predominantly Australian music, and the annual Hottest 100 that results.

But more discussion about local music can only be a good thing, something the misleading notion that Kyle and Jackie O host the Hottest 100, might have precipitated.