Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Katrina always wanted to work in broadcasting, but where?

After spending some time in Broadcasting House while still at college, she fell in love with the thought of sound engineering and managed to wangle her way into a probation studio operator job after suffering through seventh form at Marsden School. From 1987 she worked shifts on non-commercial and commercial radio working with such names as Lindsay Yeo, Pam Corkery and Justin du Fresne in Wellington. After a spot of travelling in the UK in 1990, she came back in NZ to settle back in her hometown New Plymouth where she made commercials for 13 months for Radio Taranaki.

Wellington at the time though seemed a tad more exciting and the opportunity to work in public radio more appealing. The shift back led to some voice work, tutoring at the New Zealand Radio Training School in Tawa in the art of making commercials and sound production, and producing the Saturday Morning show with Don Carson scoring an interview with Gerry Conlon, one of the Guildford Four and writer of a book that was the story behind the movie ‘In the Name of the Father’. “It took me hours to track him down and Don did a fantastic interview”.

Katrina took a year off in 1996, taking the plunge into full-time study getting a Diploma of Journalism from Wellington Polytechnic. She went back to RNZ and worked everywhere and anywhere they would employ her. In that time she has produced and presented Late Edition, trained other staff in the new digital production computer CoStar, produced In Touch with New Zealand and still works with Wayne Mowat on his new role as specialist regional Outside Broadcast host into the Afternoon show. She has filled in as host on the All Night programme, filled in for Wayne on ITWNZ, presented Homegrown for Liz Barry and produced and presented ‘New Zealand Forces Radio’ for three and a half years, a show broadcast on Radio New Zealand International several times a weekend for NZ Defence Force personnel stationed overseas. Her love of making radio sound beautiful continues as a sound engineer for part of her week when she’s not producing or presenting. Biggest career highlight to date: interviewing the original lineup of Duran Duran when they came to NZ a couple of years ago and producing a package for The Music Mix.

“There’s not a lot of time left in the week that doesn’t involve radio or preparing for the shifts that it involves but I love drinking wine, reading, travelling, watching TV because I don’t know how that works, singing with my covers band, exercising and socialising. My most favourite thing in the world to do though is to sleep – probably because I never seem to get enough…”