{"id":288217,"date":"2026-02-09T02:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T02:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/288217\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T02:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T02:34:14","slug":"in-sydney-for-sydney-why-geography-matters-to-ricki-lee-tim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/288217\/","title":{"rendered":"In Sydney. For Sydney. Why geography matters to Ricki-Lee & Tim"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome Sydney. This is Ricki-Lee and Tim.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with that the show was officially on the road.<\/p>\n

Off the back of an admittedly restless night \u2013 Tim Blackwell and Ricki-Lee Coulter this morning officially began hosting their new Breakfast show<\/a> on Nova 96.9.<\/p>\n

Coulter struggled to get any sleep at all. Blackwell, too, had one eye on the clock.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine sleeping through something that\u2019s been publicised this much,\u201d Blackwell laughed, after the pair swapped timeslots with their network colleagues Kate Ritchie, Ryan \u2018Fitzy\u2019 Fitzgerald and Michael \u2018Wippa\u2019 Wipfli, who now move to national Drive.<\/p>\n

And, as Christian O\u2019Connell forges a new national path on ARN\u2019s Gold Network \u2013 Coulter and Blackwell are taking a different tack.<\/p>\n

Whilst O\u2019Connell subscribes to the philosophy that great radio is less about geography and more about connection, Coulter and Blackwell favour the \u2018in Sydney and FOR Sydney\u2019 approach, something Blackwell suspects is missing on the FM band.<\/p>\n

As Blackwell told news.com.au <\/a>ahead of the new brekky show\u2019s debut, localism is key.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want to make it all about Sydney.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRoss Stevenson and Russell Howcroft in Melbourne rate their arses off and that show on 3AW is quintessentially Melbourne.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was told by Ross once \u2018If you can pick up your Breakfast show and put it in another market, then you\u2019re not doing a Breakfast show.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The move to Breakfast had many of Blackwell\u2019s friends scratching their heads. Had he been demoted, they wondered?<\/p>\n

Blackwell knew he was on a good wicket:<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess to the untrained eye it does feel a bit ridiculous. I have been doing Drive for 13 years and there are no better hours than 4-6pm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it (Sydney Breakfast) is the pinnacle. This is where the giants are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Both Coulter and Blackwell (pictured above with newsreader Sarah Harris) already have runs on the board,<\/a> with Coulter having started out in Breakfast on Brisbane\u2019s B105 and Blackwell cutting his teeth in Melbourne on Hughesy and Kate.<\/p>\n

Breakfast radio continues to be a changing landscape and the outcome of this latest battle will decide the future configuration of the programs in this timeslot in the future. After all, it\u2019s where the big bucks are paid and made. All stakeholders in this fight \u2013 shareholders, advertisers, listeners, and even staff \u2013 are cheering for different teams.\u00a0As you\u2019d expect, given it\u2019s their own financial or professional futures at stake.<\/p>\n

The bigger question is: Can Breakfast radio, regardless of its geography or philosophy, maintain its appeal to the massive audience it currently commands?<\/p>\n

The Ricki-Lee and Tim Breakfast show can be heard from 6-9am weekdays on Nova 96.9 Sydney.<\/p>\n

Images supplied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWelcome Sydney. This is Ricki-Lee and Tim.\u201d And with that the show was officially on the road. Off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278,9760,126732,138265,138266,138267,138268],"class_list":{"0":"post-288217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-nova-96-9","13":"tag-nova-entertainment","14":"tag-nova-sydney","15":"tag-ricki-lee-coulter","16":"tag-sarah-harris","17":"tag-tim-blackwell"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}