TLDR
Dr Chris Brown, Amy Gerard and Jack Charles take over the KIIS 1065 Sydney breakfast slot from 9 November 2026. The show's audience share has fallen from 12.7% to 6.8% since the Kyle and Jackie O split, leaving ARN with two ratings surveys to rebuild before the 2027 agency buying season.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The new line-up
ARN announced on 21 September 2026 that Dr Chris Brown, Amy Gerard and Jack Charles will host the new KIIS 1065 Sydney breakfast show, launching on Monday, 9 November 2026.[1] The programme will span radio, video and live experiences, according to the network.
ARN chief executive Michael Stephenson said: "This is a big moment for ARN and the future of KIIS Sydney. We've brought together big names and fresh new talent to create the best content for radio, video and in real life experiences."[1] The announcement ends months of speculation about who would fill a slot that, at its peak, was the most listened-to breakfast programme in Sydney's commercial FM market.
How the slot was lost
On 3 March 2026, ARN filed a disclosure with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX, where ARN trades as A1N) stating that Jacqueline Henderson, known on-air as Jackie O, "cannot continue to work with Mr Kyle Sandilands."[2] The show came off-air the same day, with interim arrangements put in place while the network found a permanent replacement.
At the time of the split, KIIS 1065 held a 12.7% share of Sydney's breakfast radio audience, a position it had held as the number one commercial FM breakfast show for 57 consecutive GfK survey periods.[3] Kevin Lynch set out that record in an affidavit filed in the Federal Court of Australia on 23 March 2026.[3]
What the numbers mean for advertisers
By GfK Radio 360 Survey 5 2026, published 31 August, KIIS 1065's Monday-to-Friday breakfast share had fallen to 6.8%, up just 0.1 percentage points from 6.7% the previous period.[4] That 6.8% is less than half the 12.7% recorded in Survey 1, with rivals including 2GB and smoothfm absorbing audience across the period as KIIS ran interim content.
Cumulative weekly reach tells a different story. Survey 5 puts KIIS 1065's weekly reach at 1,007,000 listeners, up 74,000 from 933,000 in the prior survey period.[4] Weekly reach counts every individual listener who tunes in across the whole week, not just the breakfast hour, giving ARN something to sell to buyers even as the breakfast share figure remains deeply depressed.
Breakfast radio commands the highest advertising rates of any commercial radio daypart, reaching commuters and the 25-to-54-year-old demographic that carries the most advertiser spending. Rate cards, the prices ARN charges agencies, and the audience guarantees that underpin them were built on a 12.7% share. At 6.8%, those guarantees cannot hold without a significant rebuild.
GfK, the global research firm that measures Australian radio ratings, runs ten surveys a year. Two surveys remain in the 2026 schedule before agencies finalise their 2027 radio budgets and rate negotiations begin. Brown, Gerard and Charles go to air on 9 November, meaning they get at most two survey periods of data before media buyers set the rates that will govern the slot for the year ahead.[1]
SOURCES & CITATIONS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Who are the new KIIS 1065 Sydney breakfast hosts?
Why did the Kyle and Jackie O Show end?
How much audience has KIIS 1065 breakfast lost since the split?
What do the ratings mean for advertisers buying KIIS breakfast?
Xaviery Malinao writes for Prompt the Market on how brands and agencies are adapting to answer engines, drawing on Bushnote's work with clients across search, AI search and content.
