Jonesy and Amanda: ‘We were cut adrift, and it hurt’

ARN is being hammered on multiple fronts. It is beset by departing listeners at Kiis, investors who have lost faith and stars who are suing for tens of millions of dollars.

Amid the trouble, the network has some rocks to cling to in the form of Gold’s national breakfast host Christian O’Connell, and now national drive duo Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller.

The latter’s new drive show — Jonesy and Amanda — is thriving, with listeners across the country responding to the chemistry between the former breakfast hosts, with solid ratings in the first survey of 2026 in Sydney and Melbourne.

ARN’s new CEO Michael Stephenson and new chief content officer Dave Cameron are reportedly loving the success of Jonesy and Amanda. But it hasn’t always been that way at ARN. In a discussion with Mumbrella ahead of the first radio ratings survey break this year, the duo remembered how under former ARN management they felt “ghosted”. They faced the prospect of  being cut loose as ARN botched the plan to acquire Triple M and divest the Gold stations.

They looked on too as colleagues Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson received a contract that turned out too good to be true. Jones says he felt “no one rated us and I didn’t understand why”. He jokes that perhaps it’s because “we don’t talk about anal sex for two hours”.

But, as we learn below, both presenters are now feeling confident in their new timeslot and have no plans to step away.

Q and A with Jonesy and Amanda

Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones in their North Sydney studio

You have had a front row seat at some big changes in radio over two decades including the rise of podcasts, many management changes at ARN and a name change at Gold. When ARN tried to buy Triple M and dump Gold, were you unsure where you might end up?

Keller: Very much so. We were uncertain for a year.

Jones: We got cut adrift in that period.

Keller: And it really hurt our feelings.

Jones: I just felt that no one rated us and I didn’t understand why that was.

Maybe it’s because we don’t talk about anal sex for two hours. [Keller interjects: We reckon one hour is enough!] And we don’t play that horrible gangster hip-hop stuff.

We are actually one of the best shows in the country. All I wanted to do, if Triple M gave us a good offer, that would have been fertile ground for us to start again.

I thought if you guys don’t have faith in us, we’ll go across the road and beat you. Twenty-odd years ago, Triple M didn’t want us. We came over here and we beat Triple M.

Keller: It felt like we had no control of it, like a soccer player being traded. That felt uncomfortable and we felt ghosted by our own organisation, because no one had any information for us.

When you were pitched a move from breakfast to drive, were there any thoughts about quitting?

Keller: Brendan Jones is like a machine and there’s no way he would ever want to rest or stop. And I’m the same. But I must say there was something quite attractive about the energy shift [moving out of breakfast] and I was relieved that it happened.

I was surprised at first, but now I couldn’t go back because these hours are much more feasible. I feel better about continuing because it’s less taxing.

Jones: I felt lost at the end of our last show last year. I went, well, is this it? Is that how we finished? But then I thought it could be worse if I didn’t have another show to come back to. We’re still doing the radio show and I still get the same amount of satisfaction out of it.

Dave Cameron has been busy since arriving at ARN. Have you spent any time with your new chief content officer?

Keller: I love him. Yeah, I really like him. He’s such a nice guy.

I knew of him obviously, but we hadn’t had any one-on-ones with him before. He comes up a couple of times a week. I’m enjoying his company.

Jones: He’s a fan of our show. He actually listens to it, which I always like. But sometimes when you’ve got a PD that listens to your show it can be bad.

It’s worse when a PD listens to your show and hates it, which I’ve had a few times in the past from various PDs. They’re long gone now!

When you’ve got a fan of the show that gets it, you go, okay, that’s nice.

Did national drive feel like you were building something new or moving your existing Gold breakfast program?

Jones: A bit of both. We were aware of the different kinds of listening you have in drive versus breakfast.

Keller: If you’re coming home from work or you’ve picked up kids or whatever the story may be, you may have had a tough day at work. You’re going home, you might have to cook dinner and it may not be easy. We see ourselves as a bit of a bubble on the way home. We just want to be light and fun and we are aware we don’t have to touch the topics of the day.

Jones: We don’t have to touch politics. We don’t have to unpack the world.

The breakfast show felt like work. This feels like fun.

Everyone talks about breakfast radio, how great it is and that it’s easy. The hardest thing about breakfast radio is you’ve got to get up very early.

Doing drive is a totally different ball game. It’s given me a real career shot in the arm.

Did starting a new show remind you of your first days working together on breakfast at what was WSFM?

Jones: It felt like when Amanda first came and we started working together, it just felt right. And this feels right. I feel very confident with what we’re doing. I know there’s a lot of outside noise at the moment, but I’m just very confident. I just feel that the show is working.

There were no radio show podcasts when you started at WSFM, but you now seem well across digital and social media.

Keller: This is thanks to Jenna [Benson, see photo above], our social media guru. She is a digital genius. She knows that there are different audiences for different things. A Facebook audience will react to something differently to a Tiktok audience, so too will an Instagram audience.

Our Facebook page is the most engaged Facebook page of all Australian radio shows and stations and has been for the past five or so years. This year has been particularly good because our Instagram and Tiktok accounts are also getting a lot of engagement.

For a music station there is a lot of talk on drive, but it seems to be what the audience wants. How is the demand from advertisers?

Keller: This is a drive show with a lot of content.

Jones: We’ve been told repeatedly by our sales guys that we’re oversold.

Keller: They seem happy to have a known brand, nationally, and a show that has rated for 20 years. We can be relied on for consistency.

How brand safe are Jonesy and Amanda?

Keller: I’d like to think we’re not vanilla, but we’re brand safe because we have a history of being reliable. We’ve shared our lives, so people know who we are. They know what they’re getting with us.

We’re not glib radio people or any of that. People know us, know our story, know of us as a duo. We are living suburban lives with our families.

Even though our show can have a bit of an edge to it, we are very brand safe personally.

Jones: We don’t have people escorting us down in the lift to get to our vehicles. We don’t have any of that. We leave the building on our own accord.

Keller: We wave at people and they go, “Who’s that?”

Any network learnings so far this year?

Jones: Because of the time differences around Australia we had to rename the Five at Five quiz segment The Fast Five.

For years I used to do the weather, the time and the temp, all that sort of stuff. That’s all gone, which I don’t really miss.

Keller: We’ve had a few incredible thunderstorms recently which we see from our new studios [in North Sydney]. It’s been very tempting to mention them.