Kyle and Jackie O are losing listeners in two states, while Christian O’Connell pushes further ahead in Melbourne as he prepares to take his show national. And Sydneysiders are switching to Smooth and Gold as summer edges closer.

Today’s ratings book marks the final survey to be released in the calendar year, covering off the period from October 5 to November 8.

Survey 8, which covers November 9 to December 13, comes out on January 20 — while, of course, the period between December 14 and January 18 is a liminal space, devoid of traditional time units or radio ratings.

By this point in the year, most of the programming decisions for 2026 have been made, so today’s results either reaffirm hard decisions made, or provide further celebratory fodder to teams already secure in their ratings success.

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Chris Bath stepped into one of the toughest role at ABC Sydney this year, taking over from Richard Glover in the drive slot, after he drove it home daily for 26 years.

Bath announced on Monday afternoon she’ll be leaving the show in 2026, moving to Sunday mornings. Her show commanded just 4.9% of the drive audience this survey, falling 1.3 points. In the same survey in 2024, Glover held 7.3% of the audience for ABC Sydney. At that point ABC Sydney held 7.5%, compared to this survey’s 5.5%.

Overall in Sydney, 2GB rules the roost, with 13.8%. On the FM band, Smooth is 2.1 points clear of KIIS, grabbing 11.4 of the audience and a comfortable lead in FM. Smooth jumped 0.7% this book, the second-biggest percentage jump after Gold, who leaped 0.8 to hit 8.7 – in third place on the FM dial.

KIIS dropped by 0.5% to sit in second with 9.3, while its biggest stars Kyle and Jackie O — whose show will be expanding to Perth next year on DAB+ — have fallen 1.1 points in their hometown, now holding 12.5% of the Sydney breakfast audience.

They remain well ahead on the FM band — their nearest rival is the exceptionally named Bogart Torelli on Smooth, who climbed 1.2 points to sit at 9% — but fall further behind Ben Fordham on 2GB, who remained static on 16.8 (although some of the “static” can be attributed to being on AM … that’s an audio-fidelity joke).

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Sticking with Kyle and Jackie O, they also fell in Melbourne breakfast — dropping 0.5% to sit at 5.5 points – quite a bit below their previous high of 6.1%, relatively speaking.

Luckily for them, Jase and Lauren at Nova, Mick Molloy at Triple M, Fifi, Fev and Nick on The Fox, and Mike Perso and Jennifer Hansen at Smooth all lost breakfast listeners, too. Even Ross Stevenson and Russel Howcroft on 3AW managed to shed a few listeners — although with over a fifth of the entire Melbourne breakfast audience, they won’t be too perturbed.

After slipping behind Kyle and Jackie O in Survey 5, ABC Melbourne’s Sharnelle Vella and Bob Murphy have climbed 1.4 points on to 7.8%, zooming past Smooth and Triple M’s breakfast teams in this survey.

Christian O’Connell, meanwhile, rose 0.3 points to expand his lead in the competitive Melbourne FM breakfast market. He holds 11.2 points, with Fifi, Fev and Nick a long second on 8.7 points.

Overall, Gold climbed 1.3 points to sit at 12.5 — within striking distance of longtime leaders 3AW, who hold 14.7 points on the AM band — and well ahead of FM rivals Smooth, who hold 8.8%.

Gold saw increases in every single timeslot across the week, while Smooth saw across-the-board losses for its shows.

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