Mai FM storms up the charts in latest radio ratings

By RENEE KIRIONA

Tapping into the hip-hop culture has seen Mai FM become the biggest mover in Auckland's competitive radio market.

But Robert Rakete, a founding DJ at the Ngati Whatua-owned radio station, remembers the days when no one listened.

The latest Auckland radio survey found the music station to have the second largest weekly cumulative audience (the number of people aged 10 or older who tune in at any time over a week), and that its listeners had increased substantially more than any of the other 41 stations evaluated.

For Rakete, 37, who in the 1990s presented the music television show RTR, the station has come a long way from a handful of listeners to a weekly cumulative audience of 187,300.

"I remember the time when no one gave a damn. Sometimes it got that bad that I had to call my mum to phone us because we were getting no calls for our competitions."

Rakete, who runs the breakfast show, attributes its success to specialising in music that competitors regarded as a no-go zone.

"My good friend Quincy Jones, who I once met in the men's room, told me hip-hop and R&B is the rock 'n roll for the new generation - what Elvis was to our grandparents is what the likes of Beyonce and Missy Elliott are to the young ones today."

He also credited the success to a group of Maori determined to prove the attitudes they were doomed to fail wrong.

"One MP told us [when listener ratings began to increase] that there were too many white people listening and that this would pose a problem for our rivals. Our response was should we put brown decoders on the radio?"

"Mai FM started off on aroha [love]. The year we went to air none of the staff got paid because our funding was too low. We were also up against remarks such as 'that Maori station will not last because the staff will steal the equipment'."

International artists such as Snoop Dog, Naughty By Nature, Jamelia and Mary J Blige feature high on the station's playlist, but New Zealand talent including Scribe, Che Fu, King Kapisi, Nesian Mystik and P-Money are given just as much, if not more, air time.

Rakete said Mai FM's commitment to Maori language and culture is delivered in a way people can relate to and understand.

"We have listeners of all races tuning in. The other day I was walking down the street and an Asian brother stopped me to say in a bit of broken English that he loved Mai FM."

Mai FM is the only radio station catering for young people who are hip-hop and R&B music fans. Niu FM (103.8), set up in 2002, has a similar format but unlike Mai FM specialises in non-contemporary hip-hop and R&B such as Warren G, Pop-Soul and Motown.