“A year’s a long time in radio,” Amanda Lee, head of the Hit Network’s metro content, tells Mumbrella. She’s explaining why Sydney’s 2DayFM has changed format for the second time in a little over a year.

“12 months ago, it was a different landscape in Sydney, from a breakfast show point of view,” Lee says.

In March 2025, 2Day FM introduced a big format shift, declaring it will play “more new music than any other commercial radio station in Sydney” and launching the slogan “the hits before they hit”.

The likes of Dom Dolla, Sabrina Carpenter, The Kid Laroi, SZA, and Billie Eilish rushed into the playlist. A social media campaign promised the station would “showcase the youthful and vibrant side of Sydney”.

ADVERTISEMENT

Southern Cross Austereo’s then-chief content officer Dave Cameron told Mumbrella at the time its young new breakfast team Jimmy Smith and Nath Roye were “doing a style of radio at the moment that is not being done in the city”.

A younger music format made sense at the time. “We’re up against heritage breakfast shows with our competitors,” Lee explains. “And, from our audience feedback, it fitted at the time for us: a younger format, and growing a soundtrack alongside a younger breakfast show.”

As Lee said, a year’s a long time in radio.

In Sydney breakfast, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson are no longer at Kiis, Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones have moved to national drive on Gold, while Ryan Fitzgerald, Michael Wipfli, and Kate Ritchie have done likewise for Nova. Jimmy Smith has also left 2DayFM.

It was time for another format change.

“It’s not something you just flick the switch on,” she explains. “You do a lot of audience insights, take on the feedback, study different formats, look at the whole music format positions in the market and go, ‘Hey, where could we really have a good chance here?’

“A lot of our research and audience feedback was coming back around – ‘We’d like some more variety, familiarity, songs we can sing along to that energise us’.”

The desire for familiarity was trumping the need for new music in the audience feedback surveys. “That started our exploration of what a format could be, and really looked into some of the areas that people love.”

The new position

The station now aims to serve a demographic that spans younger listeners with vintage tastes (assuming you considering Rihanna to be vintage), and those who listened to 2DayFM back in the ’90s and early ’00s.

“A female 25 to 44 audience, they love the ’90s, they love the noughties, they love a bit of the ’10s, they still want to hear their favourite hits and their favourite core artists,” Lee figures. “It was easy for us to put an under-40s variety format together. So that’s where we landed.”

Technically, 2DayFM is now an Adult Contemporary station. Among the artists that tested best among listeners were Usher, Britney Spears, Destiny’s Child, Maroon 5, Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake, while newer songs are playlisted from the likes of Tame Impala, Amy Shark, Olivia Rodrigo, Lady Gaga, and Harry Styles.

The new slogan “Better music and more of it” even has the ring of nostalgia to it, being the original 2DayFM tag from throughout the 1990s to 2005. (That same tagline was also plundered by ARN for its Gold and WS-FM stations in 2017).

“‘Hits before they hit’ doesn’t really fit anymore,” Lee says. “We did our research into that as well, around, ‘what do people believe about 2DayFM’?

“It was really interesting,” Lee says of the survey results. “‘Better music and more of it’ came back incredibly strong for us. We actually had that music positioner from the 1990s to 2005. We had already embedded it in. So it was just a really natural fit for us to bring back, and just really complements the new music format that we have on 2DayFM.”

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.