KIIS FM’s Kyle and Jackie O have claimed that Nova’s Sarah McGilvray is being “squeezed out” of the Fitzy & Wippa breakfast show to make way for Kate Ritchie’s return.
If the rumours are true, Ritchie won’t be rejoining co-presenters Joel Creasey and Tim Blackwell as planned, but will instead be joining the Fitzy & Wippa breakfast show alongside hosts Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald and Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli.
Kate Ritchie has been on a break from her Nova FM drive show since October last year – stating at the time that she wanted to focus on her personal life. According to reports, she was fined for a DUI in August and suspended from driving for three months.
Presenters Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson were discussing the industry rumors on their Thursday morning radio show.
Sandilands said “They’re all topsy-turvy over at Nova apparently. All s**t’s gone loose over there.” He went on – “I think they’re putting that chick from Home and Away [Ritchie] on the breakfast show is what I’ve heard.”
Henderson was heard to confirm the rumour saying ‘Yeah, they are.’
“And they’re moving Kate Ritchie onto Fitzy and Wippa,” said Sandilands. He went on to ask, “What happened to Sarah that used to work here?”
“She used to work for us and then she wanted to become a Jackie and had to go to Nova… What happened to her?”
Henderson said she wasn’t sure what happened to McGilvray (McGilvray vanished from the airwaves three weeks ago). She asked the producers if they had intel.
Guest booker Jaimee ‘Mayo’ Blazquez responded to Henderson, saying that McGilvray had been unhappy about the move.
“The industry rumour is that she didn’t get what she wanted [from management], like she was in there, committed for the past – I don’t know – how many years, but then she’d been replaced [by Ritchie] and she obviously wasn’t happy,” Blazquez said.
According to her LinkedIn, McGilvray joined Fitzy and Wippa in 2011 as an executive producer, before becoming a full-time on-air presenter in 2016.
On the Thursday show, Henderson also confirmed a longstanding rumour that Ritchie is being replaced on drive by her regular fill-in Ricki-Lee Coulter.
