Ray Hadley ends radio career on top of ratings chart, 2GB return to form, Kyle & Jackie O flop to end year

Ray Hadley will end his career as the king of morning radio as 2GB returns to form in the last ratings survey of 2024.

The 70-year-old broadcast veteran lost his crown for the first time in two decades the same month he announced he would be ending his 43-year radio career. He rose to 13.7 per cent of the morning radio audience share, up from 11.1 per cent in the last survey.

His fellow 2GB presenter Ben Fordham also reclaimed his place at the top of Breakfast radio ratings, with 15.1 per cent share of the audience, snatching first place from KIIS FM’s Kyle and Jackie O (with 13.5 per cent) who led for the past two surveys.

The morning men’s triumph helped propel 2GB back into the mix of the hotly-contested Sydney radio market, ending the year as the city’s second most popular station — behind Smooth FM, a major coup for the Nova-owned brand.

2GB rose 2 percentage points, jumping from fourth place in the last survey, to 11.8 per cent audience share in the final survey of 2024. Smooth FM also grew by 2 percentage points to 12.3 per cent.

ABC Radio Sydney’s Sarah Macdonald, who was one of the most controversial of the high-profile departures, dropped to a 6.2 per cent share of the 9am to midday audience (down from 7.5 percent the survey prior).

Other big name ABC presenters Patricia Karvelas and Richard Glover also failing to fire in their last surveys before signing off from their respective Radio National and ABC Sydney Drive programs.

Karvelas only claimed 1.9 per cent of the 5.30am crowd in Sydney (down from 2.5 per cent) and 2.5 per cent in Melbourne (up from 2.3 per cent). Meanwhile, Glover dropped from 7.3 per cent of the Sydney drive-time audience to 6.7 per cent.

But it seems to be a tale of two cities for the ABC, with the public broadcaster’s departing Melbourne Breakfast presenter, Sammy J, going out with a bang in his final survey.

The comedian and ABC favourite will end his five-year Breakfast gig with a rise to 7.9 per cent of the market share (up from 7.4 per cent) in what will no doubt be the cherry on top of an ongoing campaign of teasing infamous shock jock Kyle Sandilands for his syndicated KIIS FM show’s floundering ratings.

When announcing he was stepping away from the microphone Sammy quipped that his listener ratings would always be higher than Sandilands’, whose multi-million-dollar Kyle & Jackie Show was struggling to pick up listeners since it started airing in Melbourne this year.

In this latest survey, the KIIS FM product dropped to a 5 per cent market share, continuing the steady decline from the 6.2 per cent market share the station held in the first survey of 2024.

Sandilands and co-host Jackie Henderson entered Melbourne in a particularly bombastic fashion and are yet to claw their way back into listeners’ good graces after their program forced beloved KIIS FM Breakfast duo Jason Hawkins and Lauren Phillips out of a job.

At the end of 2023, the Jase & Lauren show was ranked the third-highest program in the market. Since the brash and bawdy Kyle & Jackie O Show took their spot, the station has plummeted to eighth place in the Melbourne Breakfast market.

Meanwhile, after Jase & Lauren were picked up by rival station Nova FM, the pair have helped the station climb five places to be the second-most popular Breakfast duo in the Melbourne market.

Their 11.5 per cent share of the Breakfast audience is trumped only by 3AW giants Ross Stevenson and Russel Howcroft who have held the top spot for 100 surveys.