Nicky Rennie: Here today, gone tomorrow

Today FM staff leave their building after the station was taken off air on Thursday morning before being shut down later that day. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

OPINION:

The Today FM debacle that happened this week is exceptionally unfortunate, but doesn’t come as any surprise to me.

My most enduring passion is and has always been radio.

Growing up with Lyndsey Yeo and Buzz O’Bumble sealed my fate from the age of five. The magic of the airwaves was something that inspired me from then, and all I ever wanted to be was a radio announcer. My favourite gift ever was a radio at the age of about 10, and I carried that thing with me everywhere and fell asleep to it every night. I rang to be a guest DJ on 2XS and drove everyone to distraction with my “practice announcing”.

I cracked it at 17, beginning my career at River City Radio; by 19, I was the youngest breakfast announcer in New Zealand, at Geyserland FM in Rotorua. My career in radio finished after 30 years and, in that time, I rode the rollercoaster that is broadcasting.

My parents were a little concerned about the cut-throat nature of the industry. Just to explain, in radio, you get paid according to who likes you. Each year (especially in the metro markets), there are surveys. People tick a box according to who they listen to. If you get more ticks for your show and end up beating your opposition, you can get a bonus. If you don’t, you can get the sack in a heartbeat. Good ratings mean the sales reps can ask for more money for their ads and the radio station will make more money. It can be a vicious industry where only the strong survive.

Travel could never be on my radar because I was always told that, if I left, I was dispensable, and someone could come and take my job and I’d never get it back. It was enough for me to develop concrete feet. Nobody was going to take radio away from me - the world would always be there.

In my 30-year career, the one word that was always a constant was ‘restructure’. I can’t tell you the number of times the network I was working for was bought and sold and the axe fell on numerous staff overnight. The word ‘disestablished’ was bandied around, often as a way to softly tell someone “don’t come tomorrow”.

Only those who have worked in radio will know that you come to work every day feeling like the death knell will fall. Those who have been abreast of the exponential change in the landscape of technology will know that a lot of this change has to be inevitable, but something that hasn’t changed since I left radio is how badly handled these restructures are. People who have committed their whole careers to radio are cast aside and basically told that they are unrequired.

In my opinion, the repercussions from the carnage that has been the Today FM situation will continue. People are angry. The irony of this situation is that the main job of radio is to communicate, and in this situation, the lack of it is palpable. It is sad for all concerned, because it is a very literal case of “here today, gone tomorrow”.