‘Very much up for payola’: Alex Cullen joins the Christian O’Connell show
Former Nine presenter Alex Cullen is joining The Christian O’Connell Show on Gold104.3, following the departure of co-host Jack Post last month.
Cullen left Nine’s Today show in a blaze of controversy earlier this year, after accepting $50,000 from billionaire Adrian Portelli in exchange for helping to rebrand him on air.
O’Connell announced the news on air this morning, joking that “Channel 9 might go ‘listen, we can’t have that’, but commercial breakfast radio, we are very much up for payola. Come on in. Don’t worry Alex, you’ve found a home here, my friend.”
Cullen will be the show’s “resident sports guru”, according to a press release from ARN. O’Connell compared the pairing to “the Chicago Bulls of the ’90s.”
Christian O’Connell and Alex Cullen
O’Connell said he had been looking for a sports presenter for the show for some time, explaining he had a similar set-up on his radio show in the UK. When Post left last month, it provided the perfect opportunity to accelerate the search.
“ I called him out of the blue a few weeks ago and we hit it off like old mates,” O’Connell said. “He came over for a rigorous interview with me, that to onlookers may have looked like a long lunch with flowing red wine, but we bonded over being dads and a shared love of storytelling and how sport could be delivered on my show.”
Cullen called the role an “exciting next chapter”, explaining he started his career in radio.
“So, to be coming back to it and joining a show that’s so loved and so full of heart is a real thrill,” he said.
Cullen will join the show “in a few weeks”, according to O’Connell, and will relocate from Sydney to Melbourne.
The Christian O’Connell show had an impressive start to 2025, winning the first two surveys in the Melbourne FM breakfast radio market, the most competitive timeslot in the country.
After establishing itself as the top-rating show in its timeslot throughout 2023, the show slipped down the rankings midway through last year.
ARN’s chief content officer Duncan Campbell told Mumbrella at the time he believed the ratings slide was due to the intense marketing campaign ARN mounted around Kyle and Jackie O’s entry into Melbourne, which bit into O’Connell’s own budget.
“We know there’s no product issue there, there’s no issues with the show, it’s just there was probably some issues, statistically, as it happens when you do surveys,” Campbell said at the time.
“I think that his top-of-mind awareness will be lower than normal because of the amount of marketing that’s been going on for SCA, for Nova, and for us with KIIS – and he hasn’t had that level [of marketing spend] in Melbourne.”
O’Connell made light of the situation with his own marketing blitz: stickers on wheelie bins around the city.
Radio marketing 101
Campbell was right; once the marketing buzz fell away, O’Connell regained his position at the top of the Melbourne FM breakfast heap. But Melbourne success isn’t O’Connell’s main ambition with the show. Speaking to Mumbrella last year, he shared his wish to go national, after signing a deal to extend his radio contract to 2029.
“I’ve signed a long-term deal with ARN. My goals are very clear,” he said.
“I want the show to be more available and that means outside of Melbourne and live. That’s really important to me, really important.
“It’s nothing to do with domination or trying to be number one somewhere else. It’s about just making it more available. That’s what is in my heart. I’d really like that.”
O’Connell is signed directly to ARN, rather than Melbourne’s GOLDFM, meaning he could move to another station, should a national opportunity arise at the network.
“The different shapes and forms and permutations of that … there’s a lot of different ways that it can happen. But that is my goal [for] the next few years – for the show to be more available.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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