Hiring former Home and Away actor Christie Hayes in January has proved a winning formula for i98 who have have blitzed all age groups below the age of 55 in the survey, and took 27.4 per cent of the audience share overall.

Xtra Insights sent out survey diaries to hundreds of households across the region with 1200 respondents filling in the boxes of what they listened to each day between October 9 to 28.

All Sydney stations plus Nowra’s Power FM were included though the main contenders for people’s ears were local broadcasters.

ABC Illawarra had the most gains overall, lifting their audience numbers across all times of the day though it was the opposite for Wave FM with listeners switching off.

Wave FM came second in audience share overall with 15.6 per cent (a drop of 2.9 on last year), ABC Illawarra was close behind on third with 14.6 per cent (up 0.9 from 2016) and triple j fourth with 8.3 per cent.

The most popular breakfast announcers were being Marty Haynes, Christy Hayes and Ryan Cram of i98, accounting for 27.7 per cent of listeners between 5:30am and 9am Monday to Friday.

Next in line was Melinda James at ABC Illawarra who jumped up one point to 15.8 per cent, overtaking Wave FM’s Mel Greig and Travis Winks who dropped more than three percentage points to land at third with 14.4 per cent.

However the Baby Boomer generation voted Wave FM as their favourite, putting them at number one with 55 to 64-year-olds and ABC Illawarra in second. Those aged above 65 didn’t agree, turning back the dial to ABC Illawarra or Sydney’s 2GB (second in that category).