Annette Sharp: Nova will have high hopes for breakfast recruit Kate Ritchie

On Monday Kate Ritchie will join Nova’s breakfast team of Fitzy and Wippa. Annette Sharp hopes she doesn’t end up in the radio graveyard that’s chockers with former on-air partnerships.

With $700m in ad revenue up for grabs, commercial radio’s newest breakfast star Kate Ritchie is under enormous pressure to bring the magic when she joins radio duo Ryan “Fitzy” Fitzgerald and Michael “Wippa” Wipfli in the Nova studios bright and early on Monday morning.

Ritchie’s appointment, made on Friday — and one of radio’s worst-kept secrets — shocked many, coming as it did just seven months after the former Home and Away starlet stepped down from Nova’s Drive show citing concerns for her health and “increased stress”.

For Ritchie to leap, months later — and weeks into the survey year — into the furious and frenzied crossfire of breakfast radio seems at odds with the decision she made in October in the interests of her health.

But whatever the explanation for Ritchie’s change of heart, in the cutthroat world of radio, stars frequently change their minds and rescind earlier decisions.

Such is the lure of the big money, and the desperation of commercial radio execs tasked with the maddening job of unearthing the industry’s next great on-air partnership.

Kate Ritchie’s move to the breakfast timeslot with Fitzy (left) and Wippa was radio’s worst-kept secret. Picture: Supplied

As history shows, great radio partnerships like Martin and Molloy, and Hamish and Andy are the exception rather than the rule.

That Ricki-Lee Coulter has found her groove so quickly on Nova’s Drive show as Ritchie’s fill-in has to be heartening to Nova executives.

Ricki-Lee Coulter (left) has effortlessly filled Ritchie’s spot alongside Joel Creasey (centre) and Tim Blackwell on Drive. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Coulter’s appointment, announced on Thursday, comes five months after she was first temporarily paired with Ritchie’s former partners, Tim Blackwell and Joel Creasey.

Almost overnight the energised trio has developed a strong and easy rapport and the program has lifted, this columnist estimates, by about 50 per cent.

Some radio insiders are already using the once-overused today rarely-used term “on-air chemistry” to describe the Drive team’s partnership, although veterans are more cautious with the term.

“A good on-air partnership comes down to three things – HRT: hard work, respect and trust, chemistry has nothing to do with it,” said one last week.

The relationship soured between Merrick Watts and Tim Ross …

… and between on-air besties Mick Molloy and Eddie McGuire.

In a pressure-cooker industry like radio — a place famously full of rampaging egomaniacs, narcissists, show-ponies and depressives — a good partnership can unravel spectacularly and publicly when HRT fails.

You need only cast an eye over the state of some of radio’s most successful partnerships to see how often egos get bruised when the stakes are so high.

For every Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller celebrating 18 years of happy coexistence, there are a dozen partnerships on the scrap heap following sensational and ugly bust-ups.

Comedian Wil Anderson, who co-hosted Triple M’s Hot Breakfast from 2017 to 2019, addressed the duality of on-air relationships and his reported fallout with on-air partner Eddie McGuire.

“Mostly the shows where you hear people disagree on air are the shows where they get along well off air, and the shows where everybody is being nice on air, tend to be the ones where they all hate each other,” he said, adding he was unable to “tame the bull” (interpreted as being McGuire) while at Triple M.

Marty Sheargold (right) departed the successful Nova Drive show, leaving behind Tim Blackwell and Kate Ritchie. Picture: Ian Currie

Anderson had replaced Mick Molloy on the show after Molloy’s longstanding friendship with McGuire faltered on the air.

At home, in kitchens and family cars, such breakups can be hard to for listeners to bear.

The Martin/Molloy duo, Molloy with Tony Martin, revolutionised the Drive shift in the 90s, with their genius for parody and toilet humour.

While Molloy has said “exhaustion” eventually led to the duo’s break-up, Martin has said it was a creative differences over the release of 2006 film Boytown, in which both starred, and for which a mockumentary by Martin was also shot.

When it wasn’t included on the DVD, the duo split up.

The two men haven’t spoken since.

Also not on speaking terms are Merrick Watts and Tim Ross of Merrick and Rosso fame.

Watts has admitted he was a “douchebag” at the height of the duo’s fame.

Other high-profile radio partnerships to end up in the FM radio wreckers yard include Fifi Box and Marty Sheargold (creative differences — Triple M’s Shebang 2003-2008); Marty Sheargold, Ritchie and Blackwell (Sheargold called the show “groundhog day” — Nova 2014-2020); and Lawrence “Moonman” Mooney and Jess Eva (Triple M, 2019-2021).

Also Wendy Harmer and Peter Moon (2Day FM, 1995-2002); Kyle Sandilands and newsreader Geoff Field (2Day FM, 2004-2010); Em Rusciano and Harley Breen (2Day FM, 2017); and Em Rusciano and Ed Kavalee and Grant Denyer (2Day FM, 2017-2018).

So best of luck to you, Kate, who at the very least has the advertisers onside as she hurls herself into the flames of breakfast radio.

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