The truth behind Christian O’Connell’s ‘national’ networking plans
ARN has officially confirmed that Christian O’Connell will be networked live across the country, beating Kyle Sandilands to his own grand plans of a live national breakfast show. But is all that glitters actually gold?
From 2026, The Christian O’Connell Show will go live across Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide on the Gold Network.
O’Connell shared the news on his show this morning, joking the cat was obviously out of the bag when he started getting congratulation texts from listeners before his announcement. “I just presume that no one knew, but everyone knows our news” he said.
“From January next year we get to break new ground,” he said. “We’ll be the first ever commercial breakfast show to go live to Australia. I actually can’t believe we get to say these words.”
Christian O’Connell is going national.
O’Connell said he is expecting naysayers. “There’ll be a lot of people that will say, ‘this won’t be able to work. Kyle and Jackie O tried to go into Melbourne and you’ve seen what’s happened.'”
He dismissed any comparisons. “We’re two very, very different shows.”
On Friday morning, Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones got out in front of the weekend papers by telling listeners that next year they will be moving from Sydney’s Gold 101.7 breakfast slot — which they have occupied for the past 20 years — to the Drive slot. O’Connell confirmed this on air this morning, paying credit to the “legendary radio show” he will be replacing on the Sydney airwaves.
ARN issued a press release on Monday morning confirming the news, and offering more details. The Christian O’Connell show will broadcast live in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide “as ARN expands the Gold Network.”
While this sounds like a grand national roll-out, the truth is a little less impressive.
In actuality, O’Connell’s show will broadcast live on Gold 101.3 in Sydney and Gold 104.3 in Melbourne on the FM radio band. The rest of the shows will appear on the DAB+ band in Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane.
ARN confirmed this was the case to Mumbrella. Whether this simply the first step for a national FM rollout remains to be seen. Could a national FM rollout for the Christian O’Connell be done successfully?
The first technicality going in O’Connell’s favour is that he is signed directly to ARN, not to the Gold Network, meaning he can appear on any station owned by the parent company.
In January, when ARN rebadged Sydney station WS-FM to Gold 101.7, it also quietly brought Adelaide’s Cruise 1323 into the Gold Network. ARN didn’t go so far as to rename the Adelaide station — which broadcasts classic hits on the AM band — but the station’s logo and font mirrors that of the other Gold stations.
O’Connell’s smooth voice and laid-back playlist could slot in nicely on the AM band. A more likely Adelaide home for his breakfast show, however, would be Mix 102.3, ARN’s commercial station, which is part of the KIIS network.
Aside from the name difference, Mix tends towards ‘adult contemporary’ programming like Gold (hits from the past, sprinkled with modern songs that play well with hits from the past), whereas KIIS stations lean towards the ‘contemporary hits’ format, traditionally known as Top 40 radio.
The current breakfast team on Mix, Hayley Pearson and Max Burford, only started on air in late January as a duo, and have so far failed to trouble Triple M or Nova in the breakfast ratings.
ARN only owns one Brisbane station, KIIS 97.3, which is a 50/50 joint venture between ARN and Nova. The station’s breakfast show added NRL star Corey Oates to existing duo Robin Bailey and Kip Wightman in January, and the show regularly rates fourth in its timeslot.
In Perth, ARN owns 96FM, which makes sense under the Gold banner. The station was previously branded to fit stylistically with the KIIS network, but now sports its own distinct logo and a playlist which skews closer to the classic hits format of Gold stations.
ARN also owns half of Nova 93.7 in Perth, but its unlikely that ARN will ever give over its biggest breakfast star to a Nova branded station, nor that Nova would replace current breakfast show Nathan, Nat & Shaun, which regularly commands more than 20% of the city’s listeners in the timeslot.
There is also the issue of a pesky three-hour time difference between Melbourne and Perth, meaning that O’Connell’s ‘live’ breakfast show may actually be delayed, even on DAB+. It is possible Connell could record extra hours exclusively for the west coast after finishing his first three-hour shift, but it seems unlikely. When contacted by Mumbrella on the issue, O’Connell said the details hadn’t been worked out yet.
Davis, Sandilands, and Henderson at ARN’s North Sydney studios.
Maybe the tentative expansion into a DAB+ only broadcast in these other market is to keep ARN’s other big name stars happy. After all, moving O’Connell onto the aforementioned FM stations would completely block Kyle and Jackie O’s grand plans of an eventual national rollout.
The pair’s Sydney breakfast show has won 51 straight surveys for KIIS, but its launch into the Melbourne market in early 2024 was met with a muted response — the show is currently the eighth most-listened to breakfast show in the city.
Sandilands laid the blame for this on ARN’s chief Ciaran Davis during a June event at the station’s North Sydney offices, saying “We should have blasted us nationally from day one and just spent millions of dollars on marketing.”
He explained: “I blame you guys. What we should have done is rolled us out nationally from day one, put our balls in our hand, and f**king moved forward. None of this, ‘Oh, put your little toe in the water’. ‘Oh, we’re going to rebrand Gold, so let’s not use the marketing money to tell everyone that they’re on.’
“It’s just a disaster. But it’s growing at a big speed for us.”
O’Connell’s network success will effectively act as a speedbump to this touted growth.
If ARN were to roll O’Connell out national and live on the FM band, it would most likely occupy ARN’s only FM station in Adelaide — Mix 102.3 on the KIIS network where Sandilands and Henderson live — and Brisbane’s KIIS 97.3. It would also be likely to end up on 96FM. There’s also an outside chance the station could be re-badged, “as ARN expands the Gold Network.”
All of which leaves Sandilands and Henderson very little opportunity to go national.
Keep up to date with the latest in media and marketing
Got a tip?
Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
Linkedin
Have your say