KEY POINTS:
The Long Goodbye was a gorgeous title Raymond Chandler gave one of his Phillip Marlowe private eye stories. I have always loved it. Those three words are full of the ambience of reluctance, inevitability, resignation, ending and sweet sadness. In those words are the closing of chapters, a new direction, the leaving of place, the separation of people and the passing of a long day.
No, I am not retiring. I cannot stand the word. I continue to be part of the NewstalkZB family, hosting the nine-to-midday Saturday show, which Mike Hosking developed, and I will fill in for my long-time colleague Leighton Smith when he is away. There is so much still to do.
However, my departure from the NewstalkZB Breakfast Show has been truly a lovely long goodbye. On Friday morning I got up at 4am for the last time to prepare for a programme that began just short of 22 years ago, on March 16th, 1987. It is ancient history now, that whole period of 1ZB's sudden conversion on that Monday morning to a Newstalk format, but it is a fascinating part of
New Zealand radio history. There is an element of legend about those early months now and it gives me immense pride to have been a part of it.
Remember, 1ZB had never in its then 60 years of existence been less than the leader in the Auckland market. For well over 20 years, the king of Auckland radio was 1ZB's breakfast host Merv Smith but by 1986 Merv was unhappy. He resented the new management of the young Brent Harman, who wanted him to modernise the music he played. As far as I have ever been able to work out, the problem was no more than this.
Then on Boxing Day, 1986, Merv walked out. A clever type by the name of Doug Harvey over at the old Radio I had poached him. Merv took his newsreader, Bob Leahy with him so that now, with former 1ZB nine to noon host Alice Worsley doing the nine-to-midday show over at Radio I, Harvey had recreated the essence of the old 1ZB.
Through January and February 1987, with Merv gone and firing up over at Radio I, the 1ZB audience haemorrhaged. Harman's market research was emphatic. Merv had taken the audience with him. 1ZB was in crisis. Its life blood was draining quickly away.
In my years as a young broadcaster, when we speedy radio boys got together for drinks on a Friday night, and obsessed about radio as we did, the question we all discussed was who would ever take over from Merv Smith? What will the company do when the time comes to face that question? The day had suddenly arrived.
At the time Merv quit 1ZB, I was in Wellington happy on 2ZB's nine to noon talkback show after a long stint overseas, learning the art of talkback, trying to hone some interview skills. At two minutes to midday on the last Friday in February 1987, with the drama going on in Auckland unknown to us, my producer and friend Maryanne Ahern took a phone call in the Control Room, which she handed to me.
Kevin White, Harman's main man, asked if I could meet him and Harman for lunch. That is when they told me the desperation of the situation in Auckland and of their decision to adopt a format that had succeeded against music stations in Australia, Newstalk. In a fortnight 1ZB would adopt that format.
No one knew yet and staff would not be told until the very last moment so as to give our opponents, Radio Pacific, no time to prepare. Would I please come and do the Newstalk 1ZB breakfast programme. I had already done breakfast radio in several markets - Christchurch, Swansea, Luton and Vienna. No more, I had decided. The hours were murderous. I had done breakfast radio. It made me tired and mad. But this was the break of a lifetime. This was 1ZB breakfast. This was Merv's slot. This was the great New Zealand radio question answered. The answer, I was being told, was me.
Very flattering. Except, I was not the answer. The first months sitting in the same chair Merv had used, in front of the same console, were disastrous. Aucklanders could stand neither me nor the format. They fled to Merv in greater numbers. Over on the other flank, my old friend Kevin Black was enjoying a surge in his numbers at Radio Hauraki. The sales team could no longer sell time on 1ZB and our revenues nosedived. The winter deepened with the numbers as our breakfast audience plunged.
The industry laughed at us, and who could blame it? We appeared to have made a fatal error. We were toast. Colleagues round the country watched anxiously while in Wellington, The Board watched powerlessly. There were many careers on the line. Whatever I tried, I could not stop the descent.
I would sit there about to go on in the early mornings and will myself to make the programme work. To make it happen. The station and the network required it. They had asked me to do a job, and it was the greatest on-air radio job in the country and I would have to make it work. If I did not, the station was down the toilet and my career would be a failure.
Most of my life I had run from challenges. This time, for some reason, I did not. I sat there and tried things, kept what worked and rejected what did not. We were developing our own unique format through trial and error. The programme was to be a unique blend of news and entertainment, funny and sharp.
All I had was a passionate, unshakeable belief in what it could be, an easily accessible window on the day, a kind of commercial Morning Report. I knew that when we got it right, we would be unbeatable. I could see the programme in my mind. Our detractors, and there were many, could not. We all had what I suppose you would call these days, a vision.
Phil Armstrong, my producer, who died this year from cancer, came on board in the autumn of 1987, a few months after I started, and I began to feel safe. He was a person who understood what I was trying to do and where I was trying to get to. He was smart and sound and loyal. Things began to calm down, to smooth out. Phil and I were forming what was probably the greatest business relationship of our lives.
The months passed. The miserable winter of grey cloud, dismal numbers and failure passed into spring. Suddenly one day, I recall, I noticed for the first time how pretty Auckland was.
Then a ratings survey came out and we had not gone down any further. We had stopped the freefall! Next survey, just before Christmas I had gone up ever so slightly again. And so it went through 1988, up we went in every survey, and we finished 1988 as the second most popular breakfast programme in Auckland.
In May 1989, after Holmes started on television, the NewstalkZB Breakfast went to a clear number one. It has been number one ever since. So, apart from one survey, has the station itself. It is the proudest professional achievement of my life, getting the programme up there and playing a part in getting the station back to number one as well.
Since we rolled the programme out across the network it had been well received right around the country. We finished this week, not only number one in Auckland, but in Wellington as well, two very different cities.
And what clever, funny people I worked with. Bill Francis and I both marvel when we look back at the fun we had. We had teams of talented, funny people in the early mornings all working to the one cause. I had three gifted technical directors, Terry Killmartin in the early years, then Phil Yule, and for the past seven years, Glenn Hart. When Phil became ill this year, Nadia Tolich stepped in effortlessly as producer. She has been a Godsend. Thank you, Nadia.
NewstalkZB was always loyal to me and I have always repaid that with my own loyalty. In 80 years, the hugely successful station has had only four permanent breakfast hosts. I will take to my grave the pride I had being number four. Within the station, we support each other, and no one gave me greater support than Bill Francis.
The Paul Holmes Breakfast is no more. It was the privilege of a lifetime to have done it and now it is over. It is Mike Hosking's turn now. Mike's time has come. He will do a great job and he will do it his way. It will be a long, hard road, but he knows that.
And Phil, my old friend and fellow battler, I know you are up there looking down. I wish with all my heart you had been here for the end, for our last year, our lap of honour. We finished on top, Phillip, did you notice? There was no one near us, Phillip! I rang Sue and asked her to tell you the news when she spoke to you next. As long as I live I shall remember our association and the respect we had for each other. I think we had one argument but I cannot for the life of me remember what about. I will never forget your showing up that day way back in 1987 and how, suddenly, I knew you were the man we needed. I shall never forget our struggle through that long grey winter of 1987. And I will never forget how it felt the day we went over the top to a clear number one in our beautiful Auckland.
Thank you, my audience at home, for listening over the years and for staying with me. We went through many changes together, did we not, all of us, I guess, in that time. I hope you will forgive the indulgence of this, my long goodbye.
Merry Christmas.
