In Sydney. For Sydney. Why geography matters to Ricki-Lee & Tim

“Welcome Sydney. This is Ricki-Lee and Tim.”

And with that the show was officially on the road.

Off the back of an admittedly restless night – Tim Blackwell and Ricki-Lee Coulter this morning officially began hosting their new Breakfast show on Nova 96.9.

Coulter struggled to get any sleep at all. Blackwell, too, had one eye on the clock.

“Imagine sleeping through something that’s been publicised this much,” Blackwell laughed, after the pair swapped timeslots with their network colleagues Kate Ritchie, Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald and Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli, who now move to national Drive.

And, as Christian O’Connell forges a new national path on ARN’s Gold Network – Coulter and Blackwell are taking a different tack.

Whilst O’Connell subscribes to the philosophy that great radio is less about geography and more about connection, Coulter and Blackwell favour the ‘in Sydney and FOR Sydney’ approach, something Blackwell suspects is missing on the FM band.

As Blackwell told news.com.au ahead of the new brekky show’s debut, localism is key.

“We really want to make it all about Sydney.”

“Ross Stevenson and Russell Howcroft in Melbourne rate their arses off and that show on 3AW is quintessentially Melbourne.”

“I was told by Ross once ‘If you can pick up your Breakfast show and put it in another market, then you’re not doing a Breakfast show.’”

The move to Breakfast had many of Blackwell’s friends scratching their heads. Had he been demoted, they wondered?

Blackwell knew he was on a good wicket:

“I 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.”

“But it (Sydney Breakfast) is the pinnacle. This is where the giants are.”

Both Coulter and Blackwell (pictured above with newsreader Sarah Harris) already have runs on the board, with Coulter having started out in Breakfast on Brisbane’s B105 and Blackwell cutting his teeth in Melbourne on Hughesy and Kate.

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’s where the big bucks are paid and made. All stakeholders in this fight – shareholders, advertisers, listeners, and even staff – are cheering for different teams. As you’d expect, given it’s their own financial or professional futures at stake.

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

The Ricki-Lee and Tim Breakfast show can be heard from 6-9am weekdays on Nova 96.9 Sydney.

Images supplied.