What's New
BY Sarah Patterson June 22, 2026
What's New January 20, 2025
New appointments as GOLD 101.7’s Jonesy & Amanda strengthen their production team
Reporter
ARN and GOLD101.7 have announced a series of changes to the team behind the ACRA award-winning Jonesy & Amanda, welcoming a few new faces and celebrating some internal promotions.
Joining the team as newsreader is Helen Tzarimas, whose long standing radio career has seen her work across the ABC and 2UE, as well as mentor and teach students across various institutes.
Helen’s appointment follows Natasha Lee’s departure from the role to spend more time with family following seven years of early alarms.
Former Executive Producer Jacinda Gugliemino returns from maternity leave to the newly created role of Show Director. Jacinda will be responsible for driving growth in both ratings and revenue across all platforms for the brekky show.
Jo Ockwell, initially covering maternity leave, will continue as Executive Producer, with Megan Smith being promoted to Senior Producer.
Thomas Gosby moves from Engineering into Panel Operator/Producer.
Of the changes, Head of Content – GOLD Network Sue Carter says “Every great show has a strong production team behind it. In 2025, Jonesy and Amanda will have one of the best. The team is pumped and on a mission to build on last year’s record-breaking results.”
Late last year, ARN ushered in a new era for Sydney’s WSFM, now rebranded to GOLD101.7.
Jonesy & Amanda returned to air this morning on GOLD101.7.
Does Jenna benson not work with them anymore?
Congratulations Helen!!!
Helen Tzarimas is IMO hands down one of the greatest newsreader of all time.
Great to see someone of her calibre added to the line up at Jonesy and Amanda. Great appointment and another reason to listen to J&A.
@IIJM fan: Jenna Benson certainly is still the Senior Digital Content Producer at J&A/101.7 – you’d think the team’s longest serving, multi-ACRA winner would be the first person mentioned in such articles!
The jury will remain out on Tom for now, but I hope to eventually hear him become as involved with J&A’s content (eg, TikTok Tucker and general banter) as Gen Y Ry was.
Can’t say that Jonesy & Amanda were particularly convincing with their selling of the Gold rebrand, although one wonders if their decision to do “The Not-So Secret Sound” during today’s Magnificent 7 may have been a subtle dig at 2UE who of course, are currently running their own version of this very cliche radio competition.
That “Thousand Dollar Minute” thing of ‘UEs is also a potential target of jokes by J&A, coming across as being a “budget” version of Instagrand. Not that the competition run on 101.7 for about two years now is a particularly original concept, but still…
Helen Tzarimas might now be an official part of the J&A/101.7 team, but hasn’t she been around there since at least October of last year? Either way, 101.7 had rotated between a few brekky newsreaders for some time, so hopefully there’ll be some stability in that regard for a little while at least!
They will need as much help as possible…. I though Gold (WSFM) will competewith Smooth…but now bit closer to MMM… lots of rock music in the playlist….
Whst happened to Gen Y Ry ??
After reading Hkn’s comment on music, I jumped online and had a listen (Brisbane guy here). The music is great. It’s kinda like Triple M, but without the boring sport (my opinion only). Given my refusal to listen to ABC Radio Sydney anymore and the fact that in my opinion Brisbane radio is basically unlistenable, I think I may have found a new home.
@Neil Alexander: Ryan Atkins (AKA, Gen Y Ry) left at the end of last year, although it seems he’s been back for the first week of 2025…I guess, to help ease the transition from him to Thomas Gosby.
I’ve also noticed that the order of some segments has been reshuffled around this week.