Here’s Jacinda, Simon and Winston
young people by setting up a new channel?’’ There was a boomer on the radio the other day saying that when he was a kid 100 years ago the National programme was actually recruiting lifelong listeners with people like Gavin Yates, who would be on in the morning for the kids with stories and jokes and he would always have some sort of project for you involving a cotton reel and a rubber band and paper and scissors.
The kids who listened to that stuff would drift away for a while, but they would also come back. If you can get lifelong listeners who go away for a while, you have to wonder: are teens the right age group to be aiming at?
I’m just putting it out there: maybe you could replace the weekly Nine to Noon politics thing with something more constructive and pleasant to listen to, and collect lifelong listeners, with a cotton reel and rubber band and paper and scissors. It would be a lot easier than setting up a whole new station. Also, it’s modest, cautious and doesn’t frighten anybody. I like that in a plan.
The absolute best place to listen to the radio is in a car. I quite like to listen to Magic Mike Hosking. He and his wife were talking sense this week about how Auckland’s roads are bulging and it’s Third World insanity that you can’t drive to your favourite boutique or European car dealership in under 20 minutes. That’s the kind of content I like to hear on my radio. Problems with solutions, where the solution is: more roads.
You’ll get loonies who will say ‘‘no matter how many roads you build, they just fill up again, and have you tried buses and bikes and walking?’’ But the story of human progress is the story of people who know how to put their fingers in their ears and say ‘I’m not listening’ whenever people try to waste our time with stupid ideas.
The solution to RNZ is also, frankly, more roads. Spend more money on beautiful roads and stop throwing it at a radio station with a staff of thousands. Steven Joyce showed us how you run a radio station. Just a guy on minimum wage pushing robot buttons, basically.
We’re all about efficiency. In an efficient world the government builds roads, gets out of the way, and hands you back your taxes. Like the sound of that? Great! Now let’s all put our fingers back in.
Spend more money on beautiful roads and stop throwing it at a radio station with a staff of thousands.
I see Guyon Espiner has logged on. Listen, Mr Guyon Espiner, I knew Marconi. And you, sir, are no Marconi.