I’m a veteran of 20 years of radio broadcasting and starting to feel it. I started life as a volunteer sound engineer and presenter for 95bFM (student radio) in Auckland, jumped ship to help start a new station called Oasis 94FM in Manukau City and was never paid – which later became a recurring theme in my radio work. I shadowed some of the most talented audio engineers and producers in the business until they got so sick of me they wrote me a reference so I would go to someone else’s radio station and get a job. As a result, I became Production Manager at Radio Pacific on a ‘fake it till you make it’ basis.
Five years later I quit to start my own radio production company. I made award winning documentaries, drama series, jazz programmes and no money — so I started teaching at the university. My research was in digital and online radio, and that led me to a research and teaching job at Birmingham City University.
I set up the NZ Radio Discussion list – an online forum for kiwi broadcasters, founded the Society for Low Power FM Broadcasters in Auckland, and hosted a Sunday afternoon specialist programme called It’s A Jazz Thing for 6 years on George FM.
These days, I teach music radio programming, radio drama and radio documentary production. I am involved in a research project with the BBC about the sorts of online activities that fans of specialist music programmes engage in. My podcast ‘Dubber and Spoons Take The Bus’ was listed in the Guardian’s Top 8 Podcasts back when the technology was a curiosity, and 300 people constituted an audience.
I’ve recently started a new Sunday afternoon jazz radio show on Birmingham-based internet station, Rhubarb Radio.