Christian was on the station from 2020… https://mumbrella.com.au/christian-oconnell-to-expand-radio-show-across-the-country-614979 So yeah, whatever 97.3 or KIIS logos throughout that time.
Interestingly, when Christian first spoke to ARN, he originally wanted to go to KIIS.
Wow. That’s not anywhere near how I remember it. Far out! Thanks for that!
(Updates notes)
I don’t know if promos got muddled up or what, but I heard one today on Gold 101.7 that started with something like “What would Gold 104.3 play?” then followed with snippets of songs and then heard “Gold 101.7… Just Great Songs”.
Well… it makes sense.
What would Gold104.3 do? Because Gold101.7 will now follow suit.
PS- Any update on their competition line number? I still doubt it’ll be 13 WSFM.
Yeah but would the average Sydney listener know what Gold 104.3 is? Probably not.
What sucks, is the average Sydney listener wouldn’t have heard that WSFM is rebranding - so this new hybrid brand of WS/Gold is completely sudden & new.
They really should’ve just blown it up and properly farewelled the WS branding, rather than immediately randomly introduce the Gold ID’s.
They have been running things like “we are glowing up in 2025, Gold 101.7 is coming” since mid December.
Yet zero mentions/teasers on socials/outside of on-air.
Clearly an edit mistake.
They are ID’ing as ‘WSFM - Now Sydney’s Gold 101.7’ and will I assume, for a good while. It’s true they aren’t doing much to inform their online audience.
I think it’s a sensible way to go about it, slowly introduce the new moniker, keep a bit of the old, then eventually drop the old. It eases listeners into the change.
Abrupt change is great when when a station is repositioning, changing format and/or chasing a new audience.
When Magic 11 did not quite work out, rather than abruptly drop it, they became Magic 11 2UW and then slowly over time did away with the Magic 11 all together. The format did not change, just the branding. Same here.
Been listening a lot in the past 36 hours.
It’s like they’ve replaced a strong, reliable family RAV4 with a Chery Omoda
It’s dull, VTd, the music has eased back into “gold” with fewer pop tracks especially from the 90s.
It reeks of “we better cut to the bone to save KJ now the merger isn’t going ahead and we can’t get rid of the brand.”
Smooth will be loving it.
They better get their act together when JAM comes back or it’s going to be a long, long year.
Yeah the music has been the main disappointment so far. Still too safe, but also kind of glad they haven’t modernised it much at all.
I didn’t expect much else at this time of year, but will reserve judgement until their stars are back on deck.
Hoping the music will improve with the “Summer 500” countdown next week.
My guess is that wsfm will go full on Gold 101.7 on the Day Jonesy and Armanda returns.
On that day, Gold 101.7 will drop the ID as WSFM - is now Sydney Gold 101.7 and the new website at gold1017.com.au will also launch
ARN is doing a bad job at this online wise. Still no news about the rebranding at wsfm.com.au
Their online schedule needs to be more up to date as well with the latest programming infomation
I’d say the disjoint is due to the fact that ARN Digital teams are probably still on break, whilst ARN Content teams are probably back at work, or have scheduled this change prior to leaving at the end of 2024.
Either way, it looks to the public like a lack of internal communication. Something which you’d need a local CD for. They would’ve ensured a smoother roll out of the rebrand.
Most probably.
When WSFM dropped the Classic Hits and went Pure Gold 11 years ago, was this how they identified on air?
I think it was just a straight change eg. There were no promos like “Pure Gold is coming” like we got with this one.
So to confirm, Sydney is now getting 104.3 more or less piped in down the line from Melbourne, with local ads/IDs? Must be quite the shock to the loyal listeners.
I think overnights Melbourne and Sydney problay be networked with the same music log and the stations will be ided as Gold FM just like Smooth is in Melbourne and Sydney thats my guess
WSFM is going Gold.
Mainly because of Kyle and Jackie’s platinum contract.
ARN are going full nuclear as they search for $20M a year as KISS 101.1’s ratings continue the slow burn downwards.
I suspect that at the end of 2025 the placings in the Sydney radio race will be:
Bronze: Kyle (based on his bank balance)
Silver: Jackie (based on her bank balance)
Gold: Smooth (as a very safe 101.7 fails to excite Sydney’s Generation X).
I wouldn’t quite say this’ll be smooth’s race to win. Let’s not forget just how generic smooth has become since their launch.
The Sydney & Melbourne markets have become a FM battle of the vanilla stations.
At least AM stations are still battling it out - now that 2SM have a decent mornings offering against 2GB. Especially if 2SM’s Ron Wilson will be playing some music - hopefully a similar genre to what you’d hear on smooth95.3.
