UPDATE: Jonesy and Amanda have told listeners this morning that they will move to Drive next year

The last time we reported a rumour about Jonesy and Amanda we were able to correct the speculation from other publications pretty quickly.

We reported that Jonesy and Amanda were not going to move to Triple M: Zero truth in the Jonesy and Amanda Triple M rumour

But there is another rumour swirling around the Gold FM Sydney breakfast pair that won’t go away so easily.

The rumour is that Christian O’Connell‘s Melbourne breakfast show will do a Kyle & Jackie in reverse and be networked into Sydney.

Here are the clues that may prove that rumour to be true:

1. When we asked about it a while ago in relation to the Triple M rumour, the official reply was: “We’re currently in negotiations with Jonesy & Amanda to renew their contracts with every intention for them to stay.” But the spokesperson did not specifically say they would be staying on the Sydney breakfast show.

2. When talking to us after the recent survey, new ARN Audience and Content head Lauren Joyce gave the careful strategic answer: “We’ve always said the Christian O’Connell Show has appeal beyond Melbourne … it’s incredibly strong. When and how any expansion of the show might play out is something we’ll consider carefully within the broader content strategy.”

3. Both shows are already known in eachother’s cities, with Jonesy and Amanda’s Jam Nation on air at Gold 104.34 Melbourne and Christian O’Connel’s show heard on Gold 101.7.

4. The two stations now have consistent branding, in fact, when we made the composite picture above from the generic ‘Gold’  branding, the graphics fitted perfectly one on top of the other  (we left a slight black line to show the overlap).

5. Internally, the Kyle and Jackie networking decision has helped refine the network’s playout equipment so that segments can easily be broken away for the presenters to do different local traffic and weather breaks for each city. ARN has further refined its Zetta cloud based playout system to facilitate separate promo and chat breaks for each market, which Kyle and Jackie are now using to localise topical content and promotions.

But what would happen to the still highly valuable team of Jonesy and Amanda?

The most logical timeslot for them is Drive, perhaps in both markets.

Both shows are kicking goals, advertisers are happy, Gold just cracked number one spot in Melbourne, and there are still four more ratings surveys to go before the year’s end, so there’s plenty of time for a transition.

Reporting: Steve Ahern