Chairs to die with a squeak

Breakfast host Mike Hosking. Photo / Janna Dixon

Finally, NewstalkZB is going to do something about that repetitive, irritating noise coming across the airwaves.

The chairs in some studios have been emitting an increasingly shrill squeak with almost every movement of announcers. Pauses in talkback give enough empty air to allow every twist and lean in the chair to be broadcast across the nation.

Now new furniture has been ordered to cushion bottoms belonging to presenters as prestigious as Paul Holmes, Mike Hosking, Herald on Sunday columnist Kerre Woodham and Leighton Smith.

Plans to replace the chairs had been held up in an extensive furniture- replacement investigation, station boss Dallas Gurney confirmed.

But queries by this paper had accelerated the process with Gurney promising listeners they would no longer be subjected to squeaking, creaking or other chair-related noises.

The current piece of furniture was "quite an expensive chair".

Gurney said he had personally noticed the noise and "attacked it with CRC" but "it didn't work."

He said the replacement process had been long because "one of the problems is, when you have a dozen or so radio hosts, it is difficult to have them make up their mind on the one they like."