Ramblings and ruminations with Tony Moon

I grew up back in the dark ages, when records were still mono and commercial radio broadcast was AM frequency only, implacably held in the iron grip of numbingly conservative, self-aggrandising, civil servants, all directed by the nanny state.

The airwaves were state owned, and they had absolutely no desire to share control or use of our marvellous media toy, with anybody else.

Of course, back then, I was still at that blissfully innocent stage of life where events like presidential assassinations and race riots in the States were just boring news stories that you had to be quiet for, so the adults didn't miss a single word.

The news, a fruity toned, oh-so correctly enunciated waste of good music time at the top of the hour, every hour.

It was impatiently endured so-as to ensure you didn't miss any of the intro to the latest Beatles, Kinks, (skinny) Elvis, Stones or The Who single that followed.

So that's what I had as a kid. A single local, state-run radio station, which you could reliably lock the family radiogram onto, or alternatively, the slightly dodgier (but transportable) transistor radio your parents had bought you for your birthday.

And even though you had to snap the volume down for the inevitable Pat Boone, Doris Day, James Last or other piece of old fogey schmulz that had to be played for the squares and oldies, you knew that the local DJ would eventually pull through for you, and get that pop/rock vibe rolling again.

As annoying and frustrating as it was to be stuck with just one (rather conservative) pathway into the world of contemporary and 'popular” music, that sole homogenous 'choice of one” was, despite its limits, still ours!

Though we may have decried its shortcomings (a glaring lack of edginess if you were a teenager or a dangerously immoral influence if a parent), we were entitled to, because this was our radio station.

It informed us with its own newsroom of journalists, it entertained us with a full complement of DJ 'celebrities”, and it engaged with, and was involved in the community at large. It was by no means perfect, but it was an important and integral component of our small part of the world.

Now fast-forward to the technologically and electronically enlightened present day. We have a plethora of entertainment options available to us, as well as a multitude of easily available delivery systems.

Radio Stations as physical entities, have in the most part, been quietly subsumed by the ether; the remnant broadcast premises abandoned by their local on-air 'personalities”, to be given over to that most venal - and vital - department of any commercial organisation; sales and marketing.

The majority of our radio broadcast options are now owned by two separate off-shore companies. They have centralised their ‘on air' operations, and in so doing, have removed themselves from regional community.

They have also divided their stations, into genre and demographic biased brands, thereby removing us from exposure to a wider variety of content. As slick and beguiling as it all may be, Auckland and Wellington are only little more local to Tauranga, than Melbourne or Sydney.

The few remaining, truly ‘local' radio stations, are aimed at and for, demographic and community specific audiences; the last of the stalwarts, still supporting, entertaining and giving voice to at least some portion of the region's listenership.

It would appear the rest of us are happily/indifferently prepared to accept the marked reduction of actual presence and personality radio of today chooses to invest into.

Local radio? Yet another for the endangered species list.