The life of Brian
BrianFM is small but its wall-to-wall music and quirky humour is a breath of fresh air for listeners. Carly Gooch reports.
There is a lot of ‘‘no’’ when it comes to BrianFM – no DJs, no requests, no commercials and no apologies for ‘‘playing what we feel like’’. But it is a formula which has a lot of listeners saying yes to the quirky little music station bucking the norm. It has a growing audience tuning in to its broadcasts in regional New Zealand.
While BrianFM chooses not to buy into the quarterly GFK New Zealand Radio Survey, results in the ‘‘others’’ category show a rising fan club for the station that launched in Nelson 18 months ago.
Before its 105.6 frequency came to Nelson in 2018, the survey showed 3.9 per cent of listeners aged 25-54 listened to ‘‘others’’ outside of stations including The Edge, More FM, George FM and Newstalk ZB. The most recent survey taken at the end of 2019, with BrianFM as the only newcomer, showed a spike in the same listener category, up to 17.6 per cent.
Andrew Jeffries, one of the team behind BrianFM, says it ‘‘seems to be pretty popular’’.
‘‘We play what we feel like, you listen if you feel like it; it is a symbiotic relationship.’’
BrianFM plays everything, from the 1960s to new music, a diverse playlist including the likes of Talking Heads, Alice Cooper, Foo Fighters, The Rolling Stones, Split Enz, Pink Floyd and Billie Eilish.
‘‘Most of the music we have has a bit of an attitude to it, it is usually relatively up tempo or guitar based, or fun; it has got that feel of nostalgia mixed in there.’’
But what you won’t hear is Katy Perry, Taylor Swift or the Jonas Brothers. ‘‘We are not a pop station, and that is OK,’’ Jeffries says.
It all began in Blenheim in 2015 before slowly stretching its reach to areas including Whanganui, Mt Ruapehu, Taihape, Nelson, Ashburton, Oamaru, Timaru, Alexandra and Cromwell, and having repeaters in places ‘‘no other station cares about’’ including Havelock, Okiwi Bay, Seddon and Ward.
‘‘No-one else has the regional coverage we do,’’ Jeffries says.
Without announcers or commercials, the songs are interspersed with funny quips and witty sponsorship plugs from the mystery voice of Brian.
The voice has a vague familiarity to it but Jeffries says no, ‘‘it is not the Pak ‘n Save guy, Paul Ego’’ like many assumed. ‘‘Our guy is much hotter’’. Some big names also endorse the radio station on air including Gwen Stefani, Elton John, Michael Bolton and Dave Grohl, but most of the time they are taking the mickey out of Brian.
Alice Cooper says: ‘‘Welcome to my nightmare of being on BrianFM’’; Coldplay’s Chris Martin jokes: ‘‘BrianFM – is that a real radio station?’’ And Dave Grohl says: ‘‘Hey, it’s Dave from the Foo Fighters in Brain FM ... no that’s not right ... on BrianFM.’’
BrianFM listeners are purposely left in the dark when it comes to the station’s transparency – where is that ‘‘crappy little building in beautiful downtown Ashburton/Blenheim/Nelson’’, why is it called Brian and where does the buck stop?
Jeffries says he wants to maintain some ‘‘mystique’’ which goes hand in hand with the station’s comical attitude.
Sponsor mentions are limited to 20 seconds an hour in total, in a way that is often far from serious.
‘‘Instead of saying, this hour brought to you by Glen James Jewellers, we thought we would do it a bit different.
‘‘Our partners are really up for it, so we take the piss out of them in some way and they give us a bit of money to help us maintain our broadcast.’’
Two businesses in Nelson say they put their name to BrianFM because the format draws in listeners.
Rollos Locksmith owner Blair
Riley says he chose BrianFM over the others because it isn’t like ‘‘a normal radio station’’, it has good music and it is affordable.
And the witty one-liners are working, with customers using the locksmith after hearing them mentioned on the radio.
BrianFM only has 10 second and 15 second spots promoting businesses.
Riley says he got on the Nelson frequency ‘‘just in time’’ before the spaces sold out, while he is on the waitlist to get on to Blenheim’s BrianFM.
Rollos mentions include: ‘‘Locks slow naughty people down. Rollos Locksmiths slow them down a lot more’’. And: ‘‘Support your local Rollos Locksmith and lose a key’’.
‘‘Every job we go to, all the commercial jobs, they are all listening to
BrianFM,’’ Riley says.
Bedpost Nelson manager Mike Gane says BrianFM was the obvious choice to get a plug on as ‘‘there is no talking and the selection of music is pretty good’’.
‘‘Any advertising blurb on there is a really short message and most commonly quite quirky, which suits our weird sense of humour.’’
Some of them include: ‘‘Mike is the bed expert at Bedpost because he gets to relax in one all day at work’’; and ‘‘Are you going to sleep back to back or spoon tonight in your new Bedpost bed – and it is BrianFM doing sleep research, honest’’.
The station has no street address, sending its listeners to sponsors for bumper stickers.
Gane says the ‘‘dozens’’ of people visiting Bedpost’s inner city site to get a sticker was a good indicator that the station was popular.
Jeffries says the money from sponsors is necessary for the business to run, including paying for music usage licences, insurance, GST and frequencies.
‘‘It is a little business but it has to run like a big business, and professionally, otherwise we are not going to be able to sustain what we do.’’
During the Nelson bush fires in 2019 and the Kaikoura magnitude 7.8 earthquake in November 2016, BrianFM showed its serious side.
The station was recognised for its services in 2017, winning an innovation award at the inaugural Emergency Media and Public Affairs Conference.
Jeffries says the station works closely with Civil Defence and local councils ‘‘to make sure we can provide information in a very timely manner – that means that we are doing our bit for the community’’.
‘‘We mess around the rest of the time but when the proverbial hits the fan, we will take a serious stance and look after everybody the best we can with information.’’
And when they are not being serious, quips include: ‘‘Your stomach thinks all potatoes are mashed’’, ‘‘If you could read our minds, we would probably be getting slapped in the face right now’’ and ‘‘BrianFM used to be addicted to the hokey tokey but we turned ourselves around’’.
It may seem like the station devoted to playing music would have commercial radio stations shaking in their boots but that is not the case.
Mediaworks Group content director of radio Leon Wratt says BrianFM is not really a ‘‘competitor’’.
‘‘Their model is basically to be incredibly cost effective and then use that to try and attract audience.
‘‘We could expect them to have an effect in the market just like any new format coming in.’’
He says in comparison to BrianFM’s no commercials stance, Mediaworks radio stations, including The Rock, More FM, and The Edge play about eight minutes of commercials an hour, adding up to 10 per cent of an entire day, while Magic runs even less inventory.
Anything less would not be viable, he says, due to paying tax and employees – ‘‘we have to pay for a lot of things’’.
While the people who prefer a bit of pop music, news and weather updates and announcer banter will continue to tune in to their trusted station, BrianFM is slowly recruiting more listeners opting for interruption free radio.
Jeffries says there are no plans for launches in other areas but you just never know.
‘‘BrianFM is like gorse, it just spreads if you don’t look after it.’’