ZM’s Clint Roberts is still tuned in after 18 years: ‘I don’t think radio is going anywhere’

Clint Roberts, co-host of the ZM drive show, thinks there's still something "magic" about radio. Photo / Stephen Tilley

As his career comes of age — 18 years to be precise — Clint Roberts’ adolescent decision to drop out of broadcasting school proved to be a risk that paid off. Deceptively youthful, the ZM drive show host’s energy and optimism have become part of his brand, but underneath are years of hard work: Learning the trade, navigating challenges delivered by opportunities, and forging friendships across the industry. And he still just really loves radio.

Clint Roberts likes cream with his coffee.

We’re at Federal Delicatessen in Auckland’s CBD, popular with the media workers in the neighbourhood. Our employer, NZME, is a five-minute walk away, so are TVNZ and Radio New Zealand. It’s a village of sorts, one Roberts, 37, has been in for nearly two decades, after quitting study to start his first radio job.

Things have changed a lot since then and still are — Newshub’s shocking closure was announced the day before we met, and TVNZ’s unprecedented job cuts a week later — but Robert’s love for radio hasn’t waned, nor has his obsession with the industry, which started young.

The Rotorua-born broadcaster’s earliest memory of radio was turning the car stereo on at night, realising “wow, it goes all day”.

He’d go to bed with a Walkman, FM tuner on, and switch to a transonic radio from his Nan, the next day.

“I would put it on every morning and we would have breakfast.”

But how would he become a radio announcer?

The door-knocking teenager turned to Rotorua radio station host Mike Baird, who explained what to do next.

Moving from Rotorua to Christchurch to study at the New Zealand Broadcasting School was like moving to the big smoke.

“On reflection, it was just Christchurch, but I was blown away,” he says.

“Small-town boy hits the big city.”

He got a job in sports bar Excelsior on Manchester St, where he honed his ability to spin a yarn.

“You had to make conversation,” Roberts says.

“And you had to pretend to support the Crusaders.”

He spent the first year in the student halls, and his second in “The Flat” on Worcester St, a lease that broadcast students would pass down, where he lived with Casey Sullivan (now at Mediaworks).

“I loved the broadcasting school, and the way it set me up,” he says.

He spent university holidays back in Rotorua working for the local radio station, driving promotional cars.

Asked if he could talk on air, Roberts “pretended and said ‘yup’.”

He filled in on the drive-show for two weeks. It was “daunting, “but also, on reflection, absolutely nobody was listening”.

“But I thought they were, and that’s the most important thing.”

Now something of a veteran, looking around him “you see the ones you know are going to make it”. Clint Roberts wears a Beach Brains blazer and trousers, with Reebok sneakers from Superette. Photo / Stephen Tilley

Something of an opportunist, he’s “always kind of just bluffed it” and that mentality helped him make the next big jump of his career.

Dropping out one paper shy of graduating, instead of completing his degree, he moved to Auckland to intern at The Edge.

A fertile training ground for talent, aspiring broadcasters like Roberts did everything from driving promotional vehicles to running sausage sizzles, as a way into the industry.

“You know the people who want it,” he says.

“You see the ones you know are going to make it.”

“You still see them,” Roberts says, hesitant to use the word kids.

“That will make me sound really old.”

Although his own career has had an admittedly linear and lucky path: “I don’t know what ‘make it’ will look like for them. I don’t know what this radio job will look like in another 18 years”.

“Will New Zealand still have 12-15 stations,” Roberts asks himself, and will they be live?

“I hope so,” he says. “I love that radio is live and I love that radio is free.”

He wanted to “make it” and Leon Wratt, who chose Roberts for the internship, must have seen something in the 19-year-old.

“Leon taught me everything I know about radio.”

Fast forward to 2007, and that foot in the door, and things started to get real. The Edge was in a massive growth phase.

“It was huge around the country. It had just broken into Auckland, and just taken over Channel Z’s frequency.” Roberts was in the right place at the right time — something he says is a recurring pattern in his career.

When the producer of Jo Cotton’s show left in 2007, she asked for Roberts to step in. He went from promotional work to a seat in the studio, pushing buttons, and talking Cotton through her show.

“That’s when it became a full-time job.”

Station owner Mediaworks was also running C4 at the time, and a successful audition gave Roberts a crack at presenting the afternoon show for a stint.

“That was my dream, as well as radio, to do music television.” He still has the video files on an old laptop but is too scared to watch them.

“It was quite a big responsibility to give a 21-year-old, on a channel that was a big deal at the time.”

Now a relic of the era, C4 encapsulated an interesting time for youth culture in New Zealand, defined by dedicated programming and young hosts.

“Tastemakers telling you what was cool, before the internet” like Jono Pryor, DJ Sir-Vere, Nick Dwyer, Jane Yee, Jaquie Brown, Dai Henwood, Camilla Martin.

“For my generation, they’re the old guard.” And Clarke Gayford. “He was definitely a role model of mine.”

Stepping up at different times in his career has often been a case of "right place right time". Clint Roberts wears a Beach Brains jacket with a Workshop T-shirt and trousers. Photo / Stephen Tilley

Come 2014, the company had a void to fill; Carl Fletcher and Vaughan Smith had left The Edge, and its “monster” drive show needed presenters.

“It was right place, right time,” Roberts explains, and he joined the lineup with Guy Williams and Sharon Casey.

“That show made my broadcasting career happen.”

Stepping into big, empty shoes and high expectations was intimidating.

“It was really impressed upon us that this had to work.”

And it did, for a few years, until Williams left; the show was restructured, and Roberts was assigned to the breakfast show on George FM.

“All radio companies do it, they use their roster of people to fill the gaps.”

That must be hard though, the uncertainty?

“It is, but as I’ve got older, I’ve realised that it’s part of the job,” he says.

“Should it be your life? I don’t know.”

He’s hyper-aware of that delineation, having seen others lose a radio job and their identity with it.

“I don’t want it to be my entire self-worth, I don’t think anyone should feel that way about their job,” says Roberts.

“Because it can all go in an instant.”

As pragmatic as you can be, objectivity isn’t easy.

“You are the product, so of course it’s personal.”

Working at George FM changed him as a broadcaster. Clint Roberts wears a Beach Brains shirt with Workshop T-shirt and trousers. Photo / Stephen Tilley

Moving from a commercial station to more niche George FM challenged that identity.

“I felt that I was an outsider, desperately trying to fit in,” he admits.

“Over time I relaxed, and by the time I left there I had a really good rapport with people, and had a great team.”

Kara Rickard, Tammy Davis and Ben McDowell are now lifelong friends, who came to Roberts’ wedding.

“We had a good thing going. It was bittersweet to leave that.”

George FM made him a better broadcaster, providing perspective, but his contract was up, and life was changing. “I’d just got married, I knew me and Lucy were about to start a family.”

ZM offered him the chance to be back at a mainstream, nationwide station.

Roberts felt it would set him up for the next phase of life, so in 2018 he signed on as co-host of the drive show alongside Bree Tomasel.

It was a major change and not a decision he took lightly.

“I felt a lot of pressure and guilt for walking away from the company that had given me all of my opportunities to that point.”

Now six years in, they’re a finely tuned, highly collaborative machine.

“On some shows the announcers walk in and are presented with the things they’re going to talk about that day, and the skill they bring to that is making those things interesting,” Roberts explains.

“Bree and I come up with all of our content.”

He spends an hour in the morning researching, then there’s a midday pitch meeting, planning and sourcing audio, and by 3pm, they’re live.

“You have to talk about so many different things each day, I think we do 20 live breaks a day.”

Work-life balance has been integral to his longevity. Clint Roberts wears a Zambesi shirt with a Workshop T-shirt and trousers. Photo / Stephen Tilley

Is it hard to turn his brain off outside of work, and not think of media and stories?

“Not any more. I used to, but I’ve learned to compartmentalise all of that.”

He leaves work at 7pm, unwinding on the drive home, and doesn’t think about it again.

“I don’t ever want to be the sort of person who is always trying to turn every part of my life into content.” He’s been around those people, and the churn, and seen them burn out.

Roberts also cautions against commoditising the people in your life. “I learned really early that you can’t tell a story about someone at their detriment.”

A joke about his dad had real-world consequences.

“I should have already known that, but I didn’t,” Roberts admits.

“It’s not worth it, using people in your life. There are plenty of other things to talk about.”

Off-limits is his wife, journalist Lucy Slight.

“She was very clear with me from the start that she didn’t want to be on the radio, and that that’s not our relationship, which I really respect.”

She’s an important sounding board for his career, and an informed voice of reason who understands the industry.

“She’s very grounded as a person, and there’s no ego. She’ll be very straight up and she’ll tell me the truth,” he says.

“It’s not like I’m bringing home crazy amounts of stress every day, my job is fun. I’ve always said my job is to have fun and put it on the radio. That’s what the job is, and you should never take that too seriously, otherwise what’s the point?”

He turns to industry friends Nickson Clark and Adam Burns for support too.

These kinds of bipartisan relationships (particularly vital now) are a change he’s noticed over the past 10 years.

“When I first started, in this industry, it was much more ‘them and us’ — you would never be caught dead fraternising with someone from the rival radio station. Whereas I don’t think that exists at all anymore,” explains Roberts.

“We all ended up switching companies over time, but you don’t lose the friends you made.”

Podcasting (a new venture) is like radio on demand, he says, and "part of the future." Roberts wears a Beach Brains jacket and trousers. Photo / Stephen Tilley

Those relationships are important, and he’s generous with admiration for his friends, and industry peers.

Mike Puru was an early role model, and Roberts has followed Jeremy Wells’ career from Newsboy to Hauraki.

There’s Megan Papas and “force of nature” Bree Tomasel, while Sharyn Casey is a “powerhouse of ambition and drive”.

Kara Rickard put him forward for shows that Roberts (Ngāti Porou and Ngāti Whātua) never thought he could do, like TVNZ’s 2017 show, Morena. “She said ‘why shouldn’t you do this stuff?’”

When it comes to parenthood, Jordan Watson — Roberts’ co-host on podcast The Parenting Hangover — has been a source of wisdom while he and Slight’s daughters are still young.

“They think every man on the radio is me,” Roberts says.

“They say ‘Daddy, it’s you’ and I’ll say ‘No sweetheart, that’s Mike Hosking’.”

The podcast has been “cathartic” and a way to talk about fatherhood, while having a crack at another new medium. “It’s radio on demand, it’s part of the future,” he says.

“Is it the whole future? I don’t know.

“There’s something they haven’t been able to replicate about live radio, with personalities you relate to, that you listen to every day, that you bring into your house every morning, or into your car every afternoon,” he says.

“There’s a magic about that.”

It’s what drew him to radio in the first place.

“I don’t think radio is going anywhere.”

Clint’s Playlist

“These songs, albums and artists span the length of my career to date,” says Roberts. “I’ve seen them all at festivals like Big Day Out, and each song is like a tiny time machine to a very specific moment in life. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug!”

• Goo Goo Dolls - Name (1995)
• Matchbox Twenty - 3AM (1996)
• The Naked and Famous - Passive Me, Aggressive You (2010)
• Kings of Leon - Slow Night, So Long (2004)
• The Killers - All These Things That I’ve Done (2004)
• Shihad - Deb’s Night Out (1995)
• The Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar (2002)
• Incubus - Wish You Were Here (2001)
• Scribe - ScribeUnLTD (2003)
• Kendrick Lamar - Money Trees (2012)

Photos / Stephen Tilley. Stylist / Annabel Dickson.

Emma Gleason is the New Zealand Herald’s lifestyle and entertainment deputy editor. Based in Auckland, she covers culture, fashion and entertainment, and sees these topics as a barometer for society — particularly within the rapidly evolving landscape of media.