CHASING MY ON AIR DREAM

Part Two

    When Greg Newman came to 4GG (pronounced Double G) on the Gold Coast in 1978, someone told me that Greg was a committed Christian. I contacted him, and we soon became good friends.

    One day, while working at my father's shop in Surfers Paradise, I received a phone call from the program manager of a commercial radio station at Kempsey on the New South Wales mid-north coast. He had heard from another Christian friend, Don Gillespie, also from the Gold Coast, but who was at that time working in Christian media in Sydney - that I was seeking to break into radio. This program manager was a Christian and was hoping to hire more Christians for the staff of what was otherwise a secular commercial station.

    He contacted Greg Newman the same day, encouraging us both to send tapes of our announcing. With Greg's help, I recorded an "air check" in the production studio at 4GG, and the two of us drove down to Kempsey - from memory about a five hour drive each way - to the radio station, 2KM, to meet this man personally.

    I was so excited! I was sure that this was the break I had been waiting (and praying) for. After all, when would a secular commercial radio station normally contact someone unknown to them with the possibility of a job offer? This has to be it, I thought.

2KM Kempsey announcer

    The program manager took us both into one of the studios not being used, and proceeded to thread my tape on the reel to reel recorder. He played it through the large studio speakers. After a short time, he stopped the tape, rewound it and said nothing. After a pause, he asked Greg for his tape. After listening to Greg's tape, he asked him if he would like to take up a position with them. Greg declined, as he really wanted to stay on the Gold Coast. About two weeks later, I received a letter from the program manager, bluntly telling me he thought I had a major speech problem. I felt deflated, to say the least.

    Did I ever realize my dream? I am happy to say YES! When I applied to join Radio Rhema in New Zealand in 1981, they had been on air for more than two years from studios in Christchurch. Initially, they too rejected my application to be an announcer, stating that they were potentially a network station, and they did not consider my announcing to meet their standard. They did, however offer me a full-time off-air position.

    Although again disappointed at first, after praying for God's direction, and receiving encouragement from Pastor Alun Davies, one of the staff of the Bible College in Katoomba in New South Wales, where I did a third year of study in 1980 - I accepted their offer and took up my position with Radio Rhema in Christchurch in July, 1981.

    For the first eighteen months at Radio Rhema, I was employed as a "studio operator", my main role being "carting" music. For those unfamiliar with the workings of radio stations of that era, this meant recording song tracks from vinyl records onto cartridge tapes for airplay using specially designed studio cart machines. I also had to make the carts initially, transferring tape from large "pancake reels" to individual cartridges to facilitate recording tracks of varying lengths. 

    This work was carried out overnight, with me working from around 9pm to 6am the next morning, as the studio was used for program editing during the day. Mostly, I enjoyed this work, as I had the satisfaction of knowing I was helping the station to transition the use of carts on air, a more practical means of presenting music on air than the tedious task of having to cue every music track on record turntables.

    With the help of a professional speech and drama teacher, and lots of practice, and with God's working, after eighteen months the station manager made a decision to give me some 'on air' shifts. Towards the end of the eighteen months I had been carting music at nights, I was getting a little disillusioned, and losing heart that I might ever be allowed on air. Thankfully, the encouragement from other announcers helped me to keep the vision alive of being on air, and with their encouragement, I made another demo tape of my announcing. The station manager, Dudley Scantlebury, formerly a professional announcer on Radio New Zealand, and a newsreader on TVNZ, was impressed enough with the improvement in my speech to offer me some on air music shifts, for which I was extremely grateful. I believe God honoured my faithfulness in working at nights on my own, and seeking to do a good job in the area in which I was employed for those first eighteen months.

    For the next five years at Radio Rhema, I was on air five and sometimes, six days per week, with the network starting to grow with the establishment of relay stations in Nelson, and the nation's capital, Wellington. At times, there were also short term broadcasts to Auckland in the North Island and Invercargill, in the deep south of the South Island.

(Yours truly broadcasting from new Rhema studios, around 1987)

    One of the highlights for me during that time on air was the privilege I had of presenting a weekly song request program on Saturday nights for prisoners and their families, reaching into a number of prisons in Christchurch and Auckland. I was blesse to be joined in presenting the program by Morgan Kahika, who himself had been in prison, but was wonderfully transformed when he committed his life to Jesus Christ. The program, called "Someone Cares" was initially hosted by a well-loved older lady announcer, Anita Wilkinson, with support from Prison Fellowship ministry in Christchurch. When Anita was unable to continue, I had the opportunity to become the regular host, linking prison inmates and their families on the radio with song requests and greetings received at the station by mail.

    My dream to become a commercial radio announcer was never realized. But I believe that God placed that desire in my heart originally because He knew that one day the door would open to radio in His service.

    In May, 1988, my wife Tessa and I moved back across the Tasman to Launceston, the second largest city in the island state of Tasmania in Australia, where I was on air for three years at the local Christian FM station, 7WAY FM.

    Apart from the ten years full time in Christian radio in Christchurch and in Launceston, I have the opportunity of being on air regularly on four community radio stations - in Lismore, NSW; Sydney, NSW; Huon and Kingston FM, and Tasman FM, here in southern Tasmania where we have been since the year 2000.

    Like so many thousands of others across Australia, I am grateful for the opportunity that community radio offers to present programs which would not be deemed worthy of broadcast on commercial and government-run stations. I read not too long ago, that in any given month, approximately seven million Australians listen to community radio.

    Under the direction of Richard Berry, who pioneered Christian radio in New Zealand, and his protege, Hal Short, Radio Rhema expanded from one AM station in Christchurch in 1978 to three radio networks across the nation today, as well as a television network. United Christian Broadcasters (UCB), which grew out of Radio Rhema, has now spread across the globe with radio stations in Australia, notably the Vision Christian Radio network, broadcasting to over 700 cities, towns and small communities - as well as other local stations commenced by those involved with UCB - as in places such as Newcastle, the second largest city in New South Wales, and 96three FM in Geelong, Victoria. Radio Rhema, through UCB has also seen the establishment of Christian stations in Asia, Britain, the USA, Canada and South Africa.

P.S: Greg Newman, who incidentally was Best Man at our wedding in Christchurch, has been involved regularly with his afternoon show on Vision Christian Radio, based in Brisbane, Australia and broadcasting the hope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ across the nation of Australia. To listen to Vision Christian Radio online, the website is: www.vision.org.au