Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Ron Sneddon on commercial radio

Interview

Sunday, 28 September, 2003

Interview with Ron Sneddon, Mediawatch, September 28, 2003

RUSSELL BROWN: It's been an interesting week for commercial radio. The government announced two new commercial FM frequencies for the Auckland region, and said that 49 temporary frequencies in the rest of the country will also be up for auction, meaning that some radio operators may have to bid to save their businesses.

The announcement came against a backdrop of industry trends noted in a column for AdMedia by Ron Sneddon, a former general manager of Newstalk ZB and Classic Hits in Wellington and now managing director of Auckland advertising agency Mr Smith.

According to Sneddon, our two big radio chains can be compared to the two sides in The Lord of the Rings. One, TRN, hails from the Hobbiton of its former home in the public sector, while the other, CanWest rose from the dark lands of private enterprise.

And the dark forces may be tipping the balance: the edgier CanWest has more of the audience than its rival, and scooped a majority of the gongs at the recent Radio Awards.

But this week, one of the Hobbits - Newstalk ZB's Paul Holmes - seemed to fall under the spell of Lord Sauron, in a tirade against the "cheeky darkie" Kofi Annan that caused a storm and prompted an apology. Ron, do you think Paul Holmes' tirade this week was just an attempt to be edgy?

Ron Sneddon: No, no, I don't think so. I just think he's just had whatever happen the night before, perhaps he's tired and emotional or whatever, it's just ... it just defies belief that a man of his intelligence could say such a thing. I mean is this the real Paul Holmes we're seeing? And I think the issue has got to be, what's the management of Newstalk ZB thinking about leaving him on the air and saying we're dealing with it internally, now I mean what does that mean? Not taking him off air and taking his pay off him for a week or two is just unconscionable. They should have taken stiffer action.

RB: Newstalk's news operation comes from a public service background. Does what we've heard this week from Paul Holmes, and the general drift, suggest that it's moving away from that?

RS: I don't think you can really link the two but I can tell you in my opinion at least the news product on Newstalk ZB, the pre-eminent news current affairs station, pales into insignificance when you compare it with the news product and current affairs product of National Radio. Looking at Checkpoint for instance, and Mary Wilson, I mean for my mind she beats Larry Williams on Newstalk ZB drive-time hands down. You're looking at news on Newstalk ZB ... you know it's fire engine chasing really, or it's ringing up the politician after he's put a press release out. It's very limp-wristed. I think it's a resourcing thing, you know, they shouldn't really call themselves Newstalk at all they should just call themselves 'talk' and be done with it.

RB: Yet when private broadcasters started up in this country, part of what they wanted to do, part of their motivation, was to be more dynamic, more edgy, more aggressive. To do things that the sleepy public broadcaster wasn't doing ...

RS: Well they're doing that if you take Paul Holmes' example calling people "cheeky darkies" then they're extremely edgy. I don't think that's the way to go. Look, the commercial broadcasters occupy a space that is that - it is commercial, they're out there for ratings. A good example of trying to get an audience the hard way is a chap on a station called 91ZM, Iain Stables, who does a programme in the afternoon. Um, it's very difficult for Ian to keep his clothes on. He thinks the way to do good broadcasting it to do things like the "black ball cruise" where you get a bunch of people to get their gear off on a boat. You look at a station like the Edge, one of the Canwest stations ... it's all about tits and bums and who can pull their pants down and fart jokes and so forth. There's a market for that, I'm not saying there isn't. There's a huge market for it becausethey're very, very successful at it. I'm not sure you could call it edgier.

RB: I've been reading Adrian Blackburn's history of Radio Hauraki and that's interesting because in a way it contains the roots of private radio's revulsion for government. Back in the late 60s both the NZBC and the Holyoake government treated Hauraki appallingly...

RS: Radio Hauraki probably is the best radio station in New Zealand and the reason why I say that is that it's survived. It was born out of nothing, it was born out of conflict and friction. It had immense public support behind it. It's changed its ownership and it's changed its broadcasters. I mean, people like Kevin Black for instance and Fred Botica ... I mean, things that Kevin Black was doing 35 years ago they're now doing on The Edge and 91 ZM. You know, he really set the tone for broadcasting in New Zealand in that youth format. Now I worked there some 21 years ago now and in those days it was a lot of fun. I used to work the breakfast shift doing the news. You'd walk in in the morning and this purple smoke of marijuana would hit you as soon as you got out of the door and everyone was having a great time and it was youthful and exuberant. Of course you won't find that today ...

RB: No you won't find that today. I sort of wonder whether Hauraki, which set out to challenge an orthodoxy, has just become part of another orthodoxy - is it not just a brand and a format?

RS: Yes, well you've got to look at the talent you can find to keep the flag flying, as it were. I mean they've got a great breakfast show - it's a radio station for old men though now I must say.

RB: There were two new frequencies announced for Auckland this week. Do the two big radio chains actually want anymore?

RS: I think they both want them to keep them off each other. I think that they will bid for them, God only knows what format you'd find. I think we've got 20-odd commercial radio stations in Auckland with a population of 1.5 million. In Sydney with a population of four million, four and a half million, you've got 15 or 17. I mean in Auckland you can find a radio station for almost every taste and I was interested to see Canwest's CEO, Brent Impey, saying that he thought there was plenty of space for another format. I mean, what are we missing? Um polka music, Morris dancing, um, oh let me see now, oh we haven't got country and western, have we got jazz? No we've not got jazz. Now I've got a bit of gossip for you, good rumour, good strong rumour ... now there's a group of very wealthy gay people in Auckland who are going to come together and bid for one of the frequencies. If they're successful they're going to start a radio station, they're going to call it 'The Bitch' and they're going to go after, what we call in the advertising business the "pink dollar", so they'll be advertisers for hand-cream and hair care and clothes and so forth and so on ... So that will be quite interesting. We haven't got an all gay radio station yet.

RB: That will be interesting, because it seems to me that it will do something that radio stations, commercial radio doesn't seem to do much these days and that's to target a community of interest rather than just roll out a format.

RS: Correct. But I actually agree with you. I think it would be a good thing if we did start doing that.

RB: Do the public, and to an extent the advertisers who keep radio going, do they need any more stations?

RS: Oh look, I think we need more stations like we need needles in our eyes. No we do not, we've got enough! I think what should happen is that this Government should get some spine and - commercial broadcasters will hate, you know die when I say this - this Government needs to get some spine and go ahead with its youth radio network. Okay? Now, don't be afraid of having ads on it Helen, down there in Wellington, put a few ads on it so you can pay for it and it's not totally taxpayer-funded. And you'd drive the commercial people nuts, because you'd do a great job. There's a bloke called Mikey Havoc and Newsboy rolling around out there right now without any radio jobs. You'd snap them up for your breakfast show. You could have a youth network appealing to six to 16 year olds. You could have proper storytime, I mean your National Radio puts storytime on in the middle of the night, well my kids are asleep, for God's sakes it's ridiculous. That's what our Government ... we don't want any more private radio stations, commercial radio stations banging on.

RB: Do you think that between all the formats and the National networking and certainly Canwest is programming its radio stations more and more centrally, we've lost regional diversity? We've got more radio stations than ever, none are....

RS: Well yeah, you're dead right. We've also lost the talent pool because you've got network radio stations and most of them come out of Auckland now. The reason for that was plain and simple, it was cost cutting. Let's just have one network. Let's just take the Classic Hits network, for example, it broadcasts out of Auckland. It's the same breakfast show, it's the same morning show, afternoon, drive and nights. They have little regional holes where you can put a little bit of weather forecast in for the region, and it's a great shame because you've lost the localism. However, moreover, you've lost the talent pool. Now let's look at Newstalk ZB; if Paul Holmes went under a bus or was just sort of knocked off, who are you going to put in breakfast? Who's the next big thing? I mean where's the talent coming from? Because you've got these big network stations you're not able to grow people.

RB: This is the idea of modern commercial radio as a sausage factory isn't it?

RS: Oh, I don't know about that ...

RB: You know it turns out formats and ...

RS: Yeah it is. I mean there's a radio station in Auckland called Cool Blue, it's all done by computer. There's no moving parts, no human beings, no heart, no soul. It just pumps out sort of a collection of show tunes, and a bit of jazz and some cool music. They don't promote it at all, it's just sort of there to fill a sort of a gap really. Some of it is sausage factory. I mean I think there are some great broadcasters doing some great programmes. And if you look at the 91 ZM breakfast crew of Polly, Nick and Grant out of Wellington, they're reasonably innovative but getting a bit tired and stale these days. There's Jase, JJ and Dom - don't they have dreadful names all these people? - you know, 'Jase, JJ and Dom in the morning', ah they're quite fun for their audience. Um look at poor old Radio Pacific - crikey knows, well Bill Ralston might, may get a job back there when he's kicked out of TVNZ very shortly, but you know that's just my mail.