What's New
BY RadioToday Network June 5, 2026
What's New July 31, 2025
Changes ahead for Gold’s Sydney breakfast
UPDATE: Jonesy and Amanda have confirmed on air this morning that they will move to drive next year.
They told listeners:
“We could have stayed doing breakfast for years. We’ve never fought the hours. We’ve spent twenty years with you guys, and this is the thing. We’re going to drag you kicking and screaming with us to drive. We want to build a show that you’re going to love.”
The last time we reported a rumour about Jonesy and Amanda we were able to correct the speculation from other publications pretty quickly.
We reported that Jonesy and Amanda were not going to move to Triple M: Zero truth in the Jonesy and Amanda Triple M rumour
But there is another rumour swirling around the Gold FM Sydney breakfast pair that won’t go away so easily.
The rumour is that Christian O’Connell‘s Melbourne breakfast show will do a Kyle & Jackie in reverse and be networked into Sydney.
Here are the clues that may prove that rumour to be true:
1. When we asked about it a while ago in relation to the Triple M rumour, the official reply was: “We’re currently in negotiations with Jonesy & Amanda to renew their contracts with every intention for them to stay.” But the spokesperson did not specifically say they would be staying on the Sydney breakfast show.
2. When talking to us after the recent survey, new ARN Audience and Content head Lauren Joyce gave the careful strategic answer: “We’ve always said the Christian O’Connell Show has appeal beyond Melbourne … it’s incredibly strong. When and how any expansion of the show might play out is something we’ll consider carefully within the broader content strategy.”
3. Both shows are already known in eachother’s cities, with Jonesy and Amanda’s Jam Nation on air at Gold 104.34 Melbourne and Christian O’Connel’s show heard on Gold 101.7.
4. The two stations now have consistent branding, in fact, when we made the composite picture above from the generic ‘Gold’ branding, the graphics fitted perfectly one on top of the other (we left a slight black line to show the overlap).
5. Internally, the Kyle and Jackie networking decision has helped refine the network’s playout equipment so that segments can easily be broken away for the presenters to do different local traffic and weather breaks for each city. ARN has further refined its Zetta cloud based playout system to facilitate separate promo and chat breaks for each market, which Kyle and Jackie are now using to localise topical content and promotions.
But what would happen to the still highly valuable team of Jonesy and Amanda?
The most logical timeslot for them is Drive, perhaps in both markets.
It is only half way through the calendar year and both shows are kicking goals, advertisers are happy, Gold just cracked number one spot in Melbourne, and there are still four more ratings surveys to go before the year’s end, so there’s plenty of time for a transition.
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BY RadioToday Network June 5, 2026
If Sca is smart enough,
they should bring them over!!
That would be Gold! I might transfer my allegiance from ABC Classic to both shows, especially if I were out driving in my car!
@Nerdy: I’d be more inclined to say ACE Radio are the network who should be poaching Jonesy & Amanda, as they’re a fair bit closer to being Classic Hits 2UE material than anything else nowadays!
Realistically though, I’d expect Bogart Torelli, Emma Duxbury and co at Pyrmont to be the big ratings winners in Sydney if ARN do a networked Christian O’Connell at brekky in both cities. Granted, The More Music Breakfast Show already rates fairly well in Sydney but following Ty Frost’s win over Mark Levy in Survey #4, brekky is now the one timeslot Smooth 95.3 is yet to completely conquer…and you’d have to say J&A’s continuing presence on 101.7 is at least one of the reasons why.
Steve Fitton is now No1 in drive in Melbourne with one full survey in, why replace him?? Nights is where Gold falls down.
Western Sydney are in their cars the longest. They decide who wins breakfast. They love the smut that Kyle peddles. Do they want to hear Christian ?
@AussieCam58, yes; he is, but he isn’t the sole cause of that, GOLD music tactic is a wide cast net, so many fish are caught. If Steve was the only person #1 in Melbourne I would understand, but Toni Tenaglia is 3 points ahead, Higgo 2 points ahead.
Why replace him? If Gold lets JA go over to Triple M (which DC denied, but he isn’t there anymore so who knows) you lose the audience there same way 2day lost out to KIIS when KJ left. Breaky is the most valuable, so you keep the audience on your station, keep the JA listeners around for drive (because if they like JA, they aren’t going over to Beau Ryan). It is as defensive as a move as it is offensive.