Kim Hill retiring, RNZ starts hunt for replacement

Radio NZ broadcaster Kim Hill has won multiple NZ Radio Awards. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Broadcaster Kim Hill is retiring from her weekend show after 38 years with Radio New Zealand.

The radio station announced Hill’s departure this afternoon.

“It is time for a change for me,” Hill said. “I look forward to having a break.”

Hill joined RNZ in 1985 and presented several key programmes, most recently Saturday Morning with Kim Hill since 2002.

“It’s better to leave a job loving it than to feel like you have to go because you don’t like it any more,” Hill added.

Apart from her Saturday show, Hill had been a popular fill-in presenter on Morning Report, RNZ added.

Hill’s final Saturday Morning show will be on Saturday November 25.

“The search for a new Saturday Morning host will commence soon,” RNZ said.

RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson said Hill was incomparable as a broadcaster.

“Our audiences trust and love her deeply.

“Her work over many years at RNZ has provided listeners with immense pleasure and enlightenment. She is a national taonga and we are all going to miss her Saturday Morning show incredibly,” Thompson said.

“I am so pleased she will be doing some work for us next year after she has had a break.”

He added: “Kim will continue to do some work for RNZ in 2024 and is working with us on some ideas for a series of in-depth interviews. We are delighted and will have more to say about that in the new year.”

RNZ said Hill interviewed many famous world figures, including Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Dolly Parton, and sparred with others.

Hill also had a TV show, Face to Face with Kim Hill, on which author John Pilger once famously, or infamously, appeared in 2003.

Pilger accused Hill of not being prepared for the interview and labelled their 25-minute session over Iraq “a disgrace”.

Hill soon after told the Weekend Herald she could not make sense of the attack, other than to think Pilger had become “so angry about the world that merely suggesting there might be another way to look at it in order to elicit a view from him felt like some kind of outrage”.

RNZ said British journalist and author Tony Parsons hung up part-way through an interview after telling Hill “you’ve got your head up your arse”, while British author and politician Jeffrey Archer told Hill she was rude and he had “every right to tell her so”.

Hill won the Association for International Broadcasting’s International Radio Personality of the Year in 2012.

Hill at the time said: “I mean it’s great for Radio New Zealand, which has a stellar range of presenters and producers, so I’m happy for all that. I mean, for me, you’re only as good as your last less-than-fantastic interview, you know.”