Jonesy and Amanda announce their move to Drive

With Jam out of the breakfast survey running from next year, it’s gonna help their rivals e.g triple m, smooth, 2gb. To gain more numbers based on what we seen with them networking k&j into Melbourne.

ARN should rebrand Kiis Brisbane to Gold and network Christian there. This would be far better than putting Kyle in. 973 has struggled for years against Nova and B105 and there is no Smooth in Brisbane (apart from DAB) so a Gold format might just go straight to number 1. Christian’s show is safe for advertisers and won’t get the controversy of KJ. His style of show is easily transferrable to other markets.

@Radio nerd

100% agree. Advertiser safe, proof of concept, thriving age demographic, experience with a national show, to me sending OC around the country is much more sense than KJ.

KJ has the big contract so I imagine they will push that for cost savings, completely ignoring that Christian O’Connell going national will probably increase sales in Bris, rather than putting more weights on a ship starting to go down

Like K&J this has disaster written all over it. I personally think Breakfast is one shift that has to remain local n not networked. What works in one market more likely wont work in another. Only time will tell.
If it does work lookout announcers, you will be looking for other work. I hope Steve Fitton takes on nights. He is good communicator.

Sorry if this has been discussed, but I wonder what they’re going to do with Steve Fitton?

Can’t say this news particularly surprises me but it’s still disappointing, nonetheless. Christian O’Connell will be a 5-6% rating brekky show at most in the Sydney market, I think.

By contrast, you can be sure Bogart Torelli, Emma Duxbury and co at 95.3 would be busting out the champagne as this is their opportunity to finally dance with Ben Fordham and Kyle & Jackie O for top spot in the ratings! One would assume ACE Radio will continue with their budget approach for Classic Hits 2UE, but a better operated 954AM and Stereo DAB+ would have the potential to benefit greatly from ARN bumping Jonesy & Amanda to Drive.

Maybe a small handful of listeners might head to 2GB (or even 702 ABC Radio Sydney), but I can’t see Triple M 104.9 gaining any disgruntled 101.7 brekky listeners.

As for Steve Fitton, I think he still does the brekky show on iHeartCountry? Whether or not he’ll hold that role next year though is anyone’s guess.

Radio. Gets you where you live.

Errr. No.

You can be local all you want but if it’s as boring as bat shit no one‘s gonna listen. If it’s a fun interactive good breakfast show with lots of entertainment news and views entertainment reports etc it’s a winner

A huge mistake if gold think breakfast listeners will follow J& M to drive
And network a Melbourne program into Sydney thinking it will work.

Just a cost cutting thing and not what most listeners want.

Time will tell

This I feel is not their choice … you could hear it in their voices … is this a ploy to try to get 101.7 breakfast listeners to go to K&J !
Going from breakfast to drive time is a death null … different style of show and a different audience …
What happens to Steve Fitton who has been a success in drive time .. and won ratings for the station.
I have been a listener from day 1 of the station .. over 45 years … could be goodbye from me!

When you think about it networking is no different, in essence, to playing an iheartradio station. They just have a few more announcements/segments and it beams out on FM frequency.

This will not work in Melbourne while Christian O’Connell will not work in Sydney both Nova 100 Melbourne and northern Sydney will benefit from ARN’s basic stuff up. When you are a top rating station you don’t change things you keep things as they are as the expression says, ‘if it’s not broke don’t fix it,’ or you’ll stuff it up.

@Kelly Ferrett: Realistically, the vast majority of Jonesy & Amanda listeners wouldn’t even consider listening to Kyle & Jackie O.

As for that survey WSFM got to #1 in Drive last year, wasn’t Bill Weaver (an iconic 101.7 voice we haven’t heard much from in a while) filling in for Steve during at least part of that survey?

Either way, I’m reasonably sure that J&A won’t be the same at drive. Sure, they’ll likely bring most segments and current team members with them but it’s the little things that will inevitably disappear as the show changes its focus towards a more national audience (references to the weather, suburb names for callers, etc.) that I’m going to miss.

So much booing for something that may prove to be much more successful for ARN than networking K&J on KIIS. Jonesy & Amanda are fantastic and will win over a legion of new fans on Drive. They will be a huge addition to Gold 104.3 and rightly so (assuming the decision is to network them to Melbourne also). Networking Christian O’Connell to Sydney will be more successful than people think – Christian is a good operator who respects his audiences and knows how to produce a networked show at Breakfast time (he did it in the UK for many years). He built a #1 rating audience in Melbourne as a complete unknown; this time around, Sydney audiences already know who he is.

@radio nerd – I completely agree. ARN continue to focus on a national KIIS network at the detriment of what would be a very successful Gold network. 97.3, Mix 102.3 and 96FM would be much better stations if properly aligned to Gold – a networked Christian in to Brisbane and Adelaide would be more successful than forcing K&J in to those markets. And networking Jonesy & Amanda on 96FM Drive would sound better than shoehorning Will & Woody and K&J’s ‘Hour of Power’. Sadly though.. I doubt ARN will do any of that.

Going from breakfast to drive is one foot out the door

As I predicted some months ago J&A to drive and O’Connell to breakfast.

ARN must have good data on O’Connell’s performance in Sydney, otherwise they would not be entertaining the J&A move to drive.

I hope their not using the same data measure as K&J into Melbourne.