How Fitzy & Wippa finally got their win after 15 years

Tim Burrowes

March 22, 2026 12:19

Nova Entertainment’s new drive time trio of Ryan Fitzgerald, Michael Wipfli and Kate Ritchie achieved on their first outing what eluded them at breakfast for 15 years – a number one show.

Analysis of the first set of radio ratings for 2026 across the five capital cities reveals that the biggest average networked audience in the key slots of breakfast and drive goes to Nova’s Fitzy, Wippa & Kate show. Across the five cities, they averaged 157,000.

Fitzgerald and Wipfli came together in Nova Sydney’s breakfast slot in August 2011, after the station had lost its crown to Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson, who were then on 2Day FM and later switched to Kiis. During that time Fitzy & Wippa, who were joined by Kate Ritchie in 2023, never regained the FM lead for Nova.

Mumbrella’s analysis shows that Australia’s second biggest live networked program was Hit network’s Carrie & Tommy show, featuring Carrie Bickmore and Tommy Little, with an average audience of 144,000.

Ratings provider GfK calculates the average audience as the number people estimated to have tuned in during any given quarter of an hour. Breakfast audiences are measured from 5.30am to 9am, while drive covers 4pm to 7pm.

The third biggest show – despite only networking live into Sydney and Melbourne – was the now axed Kyle & Jackie O Show on Kiis, featuring Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson. It averaged 135,000 live listeners.

Christian O’Connell’s first outing as a networked show pulled in an average of 124,000 listeners across Sydney and Melbourne, giving him the fourth biggest in the country. Although the Christian O’Connell Show is also networked into Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth on DAB+, the average audience numbers are not available because the radio industry chooses not to share all of its, often low, digital numbers.

O’Connell’s two-city audience is larger than that of his drive time colleagues Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller who also broadcast into Perth and averaged a total of 117,000 listeners, making them Australia’s fifth biggest networked show.

It should be noted that because this exercise only features live shows networked into more than one city, 3AW’s Ross Stevenson and Russel Howcroft (who averaged 136,000) and 2GB’s Ben Fordham (who averaged 129,000) were not included.

A version of this article first appeared in Saturday’s Best of the Week email newsletter. In that version, we wrongly gave the overall win to the Carrie & Tommy show, having missed out Nova’s Adelaide audience from our calculations.

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.