The autopsy has now begun on Nova’s biggest programming gamble in years – and the Sydney numbers are telling a story the network isn’t saying out loud.
From Monday, 9 February, Fitzy, Wippa and Kate Ritchie will exit Sydney Breakfast and take over national Drive, while Ricki-Lee Coulter and Tim Blackwell inherit the Breakfast chair.
It has been framed as a promotion. But in Sydney – the market that actually decides whether breakfast works – the data suggests Nova may be quietly moving strength into weakness.
A breakfast brand that couldn’t hold its ground
On paper, Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie opened 2025 in decent shape.
Survey 1 delivered an 8.7% share, just behind Gold 101.7’s 8.9%, though already miles off KIIS 1065’s 13.3%.
Then the slide set in.
• 8.6% in Survey 2.
• 7.9% in Survey 3.
• 7.1% in Survey 4.
That fourth book – which coincided with Kate Ritchie’s absence – dropped Nova to sixth place overall, behind ABC Sydney (8.0%), a flashing amber light for a commercial FM breakfast brand.
Nova clawed back some ground – 7.5% in Survey 5 and a bounce to 8.6% in Survey 6 – but it never stabilised, easing to 8.5% in Survey 7 and back to 7.9% in Survey 8.
As industry podcast Game Changers host Irene Hulme put it, the numbers were sending a message:
“I would say that, based on the performance of the show from the last five years or more, it’s kind of plateaued around the 7s [per cent]. I think they feel that it’s probably reached its peak as a breakfast show and that having a reset and moving into drive might just reignite that momentum around the show.”
(L-R) Ryan Fitzgerald, Michael Wipfli, and Kate Ritchie.
Drive was doing the heavy lifting
At the same time, Nova’s Sydney Drive was telling a very different story.
The year opened with Drive already ahead: 9.7% in Survey 1, versus Breakfast’s 8.7%. It held its ground as Breakfast slid – 9.2% in Survey 3, 8.1% in Survey 4 – and then finished the year surging to 10.5% in Survey 8, a full 2.6 share points higher than Breakfast in the same book.
In FM terms, that gap is enormous. It’s the difference between being a safe buy and a risky one.
Hulme said the move made sense commercially, even if the optics were awkward:
“I think that is a really great move,” she said, adding that she was “surprised about it being a three-hander considering it’s Drive and considering that there are clearly commercial pressures.”
Why Drive changes the game
The structural difference between Breakfast and Drive is a big part of why this move makes sense on paper – even if it looks risky on the grid.
As Hulme’s fellow Game Changer’s co-host Craig Bruce put it, Drive gives talent something Breakfast simply doesn’t: time.
“What Drive allows you to do is it gives you time to prep and plan in a way that you can’t with breakfast,” he said, pointing out that mornings are inherently reactive – “you wake up and 30 minutes later you’re on the air, essentially” – while afternoons allow shows to write, build and execute ideas properly. That breathing room, he argued, is where “those set pieces, sketches, parodies” can actually be crafted, rather than improvised on the fly.
For a brand like Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie – one that is built on big moments, recurring bits and personality-driven comedy – that distinction matters.
Drive doesn’t just offer a bigger national footprint; it offers a format that plays to its strengths in a way breakfast increasingly hasn’t.
Tim Blackwell, Ricki-Lee Coulter.
“Graduating” or being redeployed?
That disparity is what turned Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli’s announcement into something more than just a throwaway line.
Here’s what he said: “After 15 years of doing this Breakfast radio show, Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie, they have finally completed their apprenticeship and they’re going to be graduating to the national Drive time position for all of Australia on the country’s best radio networks.”
But see here’s the rub: if Breakfast is the apprenticeship and Drive is the prize, then Nova is effectively admitting that mornings are now a warm-up for afternoons. And if that’s true, what does it mean for the Drive team, who were already sitting at the top of that ladder, only to be moved back into Breakfast? Is that a promotion dressed up as a reshuffle, or a demotion disguised by good manners?
Remember: language matters. Especially if your job is to talk.
The breakfast gamble
The risk Nova is taking sits squarely in the Breakfast chair, and Hulme is openly sceptical that the new lineup will be an easy win.
She said she was “not overly convinced that Tim and Ricki (minus fellow Drive co-host Joel Creasey who’s now doing a network show) are going to be as strong,” adding that she struggles to hear it as “a broad breakfast show,” even though Blackwell, in her view, is “just exceptional in a lot of ways – technically, creatively, I mean he can panel with his eyes closed.”
The bigger issue, she argued, is depth: “What we haven’t heard is a lot of storytelling from Tim and haven’t heard the depth that I think he, we probably need in breakfast,” which is why she’s “not sure it’s going to be as simple or as quick for Ricki.”
That uncertainty matters because Breakfast remains radio’s most commercially valuable daypart – the place where the biggest ad deals are cut, where brands want their faces attached, and where networks do the heavy lifting on revenue.
Nova is now handing that chair to an untested combination at the exact moment it shifts its biggest, most recognisable brand into Drive.
So the question hanging over Nova’s 2026 reset sharpens further: is the network backing Drive because it represents the future of the brand – or because Breakfast has become too fragile to leave in its current form?