The Word On The Street Is.....Pete Gentil

For the past fifteen years most of us in the Bay of Islands have woken up with Pete Gentil. Not the roll over and say good morning type of waking up but vicariously because in all that time the man with the dulcet voice has been the breakfast host on Bay of Islands Morefm.

He has become a local identity not just with his breakfast show but with outside broadcasts covering events, as master of ceremonies at countless functions and micman at a local quiz night. But he's calling it a day, sort of. He won't have any more 4am starts but he'll continue doing the outside events and MC work and is available for voice-overs (which he says he loves) through his own company, Voice Media.

His radio days began 35 years ago, joining one of the last intakes of Radio New Zealand's broadcasting school in Wellington.

"Once you got through you could be sent anywhere and you didn't know where the hell you would be sent. I went to Timaru for a while."

It was here he suffered his first radio out-take, the dreaded on-air blooper, the clanger. He dropped the F-bomb when he thought the microphone had been turned off. Fortunately everyone but the manager heard it so his job remained safe and most people in radio understand these things happen - it's the broadcaster's lament.

He moved to Rotorua and spent 20 years there doing every shift available - the last
five years on breakfast. He and Miriana Faulkner won the New Zealand radio award for the best regional breakfast in his last year there. Then came the move to Northland and the start of a new era. What had for a long time been Northland radio (KCC) became Magic FM which was broadcast from Whangarei until they opened a dedicated studio in Kerikeri for the breakfast show and until now, Pete Gentil has been the only host and you name it, he's done it.

He has interviewed dozens of the famous and wannabes, loads of politicians 'because they all want to talk to you', and every local person trying to get a plug in for an event, a cause, a charity. Then there are the commentary positions which come with outside broadcast territory. He's voiced on air from planes, helicopters, boats, up hills, down dales, on stages. He covered the Kerikeri floods of a few years ago and was the critical connection between officialdom and the public who relied on information on road closures and the like. He's had a few scares himself.

"Power cuts are the worst and because we're small up here we don't have a generator that kicks in to keep things going but with equipment breakdowns there is nothing you can do about it.

"I have sat on the floor of our broadcast site on Cottle Hill talking to the technician on a mobile and he's giving me instructions and telling me what buttons to push. I'm totally technically useless so he's there saying push the third button coloured yellow and I'd give it a tweak and hoped it worked out."

The major change to radio during his stint on MoreFM has been the introduction of digital equipment. Before then it was 'steam radio', he says, and his studio was a late-comer to the digital age. Before then it was playing CDs and carts and buttons had to be pushed every 30 seconds or so. Today the news can be recorded onto an MP3 and can be nationwide or, indeed, international, within seconds. It also means managers can keep a closer eye on your performance but that's progress for you.

Pete Gentil isn't leaving his beloved Bay of Islands. He will be selling houses through Real Kerikeri which isn't totally unfamiliar territory because he did the same thing in Rotorua several years ago. He will still be heard on air reading the news and in voice overs through his own company as well as being available as a marriage celebrant.

Experienced broadcaster and Morefm's creative director, Andy McKinlay, will take over the early morning seat in the little studio upstairs in The Hub Mall - at least for the time being. Pete Gentil hopes local input will continue to record the daily happenings because, as he remarks, it's important. There would be few locals who would disagree.Whether corporate head office thinks likewise remains to be seen.