Paradigm Lost – Radio Back On

By Tom Frewen

Noel Leeming in Levin stocks eight portable radios ranging in price from around $90 down to $35 for pocket transistor radios — the most popular personal electronic communication device before the Walkman and the iPhone.

 Powered by replaceable, long-lasting batteries sold in shops, the transistor radio is not dependent on electricity supply, a critical advantage during power cuts, as National Radio reminded listeners in a hastily cobbled together trailer that followed the 10pm news bulletin on Sunday night as Cyclone Gabrielle slowly faded away to the south-east.

“The radio keeps delivering,” proclaimed an announcer ahead of a soundbite from a female caller who said: “The only thing we had was a little tiny transistor radio with some AA batteries and that was a real lifeline.”

The next programme was Mediawatch. Before indulging themselves in their regular weekly attack on their commercial rivals at NewstalkZB, co-presenters Colin Peacock and Hayden Donnell, marching down their shallow ditch around the echo chamber inside the political bubble that is Woke Wellington in the 2020s, surveyed coverage of the cyclone.

Among the people they talked to was Radio New Zealand’s very own head of news, Richard Sutherland, who said: "It has certainly been a reminder to generations who have not been brought up with transistor radios (that) they are important to have in a disaster. This will also sharpen the minds of people on just how important 'legacy' platforms like AM transmission are in civil defence emergencies like the one we've had.”

“Over the years, and for a number of reasons, a lot of them financial, all news organisations have contracted. And you contract to your home city or a big metropolitan area, because that's where the population is, and that's where the bulk of your audience is,” he said.

“But this cyclone has reminded us all as a nation, that it's really important to have reporters in the regions, to have strong infrastructure in the regions.”

The editor of Hawke’s Bay Today, Chris Hyde, said “Just keep supporting local news, because in moments like this, it really does matter.”

In fact, having local news matters all the time, as does having a radio. When you’re alone, crouching in the attic as flood waters rise or lying on a slab in an MRI scanner, just the sound of people talking on the radio in the room next door is reassuring, calming and comforting.

Companionship, especially in the middle of the night, is radio’s greatest gift as a medium. It is unfortunate, in this regard, that Mediawatch made no mention of Radio New Zealand’s very own midnight-to-dawn presenter Vicki McKay, who, as the storm raged and chaos reigned, carried on carrying on, reprising her superb performance when Christchurch was rocked by the September 2010 earthquake.

"Your brain becomes a sponge for detail and the mind zones in on the facts and figures,” she says in her profile on Radio New Zealand’s website which is badly in need of updating. “Radio is such an immediate service industry and it is so important to deliver such news as accurately and quickly as possible. As the official National Civil Defence Radio Station, we also have a responsibility to do this without alarming our listeners unnecessarily. So it is a delicate balance."

Ms Mckay, who has been employed by Radio New Zealand for just under 40 years says: "I have worked here alongside an army of professional broadcasters and journalists who ensure our listeners are informed to the very best of our ability. How lucky am I to have chosen a career that I love?"

Sadly, the enthusiam that Vicki McKay and Richard Sutherland have for radio as a medium does not appear to be shared by their boss, Radio New Zealand’s chief executive, Paul Thompson.

Barely eight months after his appointment in September 2013, he flew to Glasgow to deliver the keynote speech to the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Conference. His speech notes reveal, with less than eight months’ experience in broadcasting following a 15-year career in newspaper journalism and management, he had realised that by taking the top job in New Zealand’s public radio he’d jumped onto a sinking ship.

“The evidence is clear that traditional media are in decline,” he’d decided, “Radio, television and newspapers are merging into digital devices that are always switched on.

The future of content delivery is multi-media, multi-platform, personalised, mobile and social.”

As Marshall McLuhan might have said: The medium is dead, long live the message. But not on radio. To stay relevant and continue serving the public, Mr Thompson said Radio New Zealand had to become a multimedia organisation.”

He also wanted to highlight three troubling facts:

“We are weak (almost irrelevant) on the web.

“As a radio broadcaster, we lack visual journalism and digital story-telling skills.

“Our preferred method of content delivery - radio - is in long-term decline.”

Nearly a decade later, Radio New Zealand’s website still languishes a distant third to Stuff (Dominion Post) and NZME (the Herald). According to a table compiled by SimilarWeb, an Israeli web analytics company, the websites of Stuff and the Herald get around 39 million visits per month compared with rnz.co.nz’s 7.8 million.

Of course radio lacks “visual journalism” (video) and “digital story-telling skills” (text on screens with hyperlinks). Radio is the medium of the mind. That is its greatest strength. Checkpoint’s Lisa Owen tells listeners to check a video of a story they’ve just heard on their car radio in the hope they’ll remember to do that when they get home.

As for radio being in long-term decline as a medium, audiences for New Zealand’s commercial radio networks remain at pre-internet figures of around 3.6 million listeners per week. Radio New Zealand’s latest survey, however, reveals an alarming dip of 8.5 percent in National’s audience, appearing to confirm anecdotal accounts of growing disillusionment with its flagship Morning Report. But because Radio New Zealand’s management now controls the publication of the quarterly surveys from GfK, a German media ratings company, comparison with the rival commercial breakfast shows of NewstalkZB and TodayFM ludicrously requires use of the Official Information Act.

In his determination to turn Radio New Zealand into a multi-media, multi-platform content delivering audio, video and text through smart phones and computers, Mr Thompson also failed to foresee critical developments ahead such as streamed video and TikTok.

In any case, digital devices such as the smart phone and the computer are not “always switched on.” Even though they may include FM radio receivers, they are just one of a multitude of uses of which the camera and streamed video are the most dominant.

Also, when you switch a radio on it is probably already tuned to your favourite station. And, if it is a portable radio or tranny, it will stay on as long as it has life in its batteries.

Mr Thompson’s tenure at Radio New Zealand must be almost at an end. It can only be hoped that his successor will have a better understanding, not just of radio as a medium but also of the critical role that non-commercial, taxpayer-funded public radio plays as an institution in maintaining a well-informed democratic society.

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