Remember Radio Avon? It's coming back

Radio Avon, the station that shook up the Christchurch establishment and ended government-owned 3ZB’s dominance of the airwaves, will return for a brief reprise next week.

More than 40 of its former staff are back for a broadcast and a reunion marking 50 years since Radio Avon 1290 was launched on August 4, 1973.

The first private radio station in the city, it made an immediate impact with its new mix of pop music and on-air personalities – in the mould of Radio Hauraki, which had been enjoying similar success in Auckland.

Two former Avon announcers, Morry Shanahan and Kim Adamson, will be fronting a two-hour special on community station 96.9 Plains FM from 10am on Saturday, August 5.  

The programme will be streamed around the world, something that would never have been possible in 1973.

At one time in its 17-year history, Radio Avon had 55 per cent of Christchurch people tuning in. The journey ended in 1990 when it merged with another station and was later rebranded C93FM.

Many of the original on-air team from 1973 are still remembered today, such as programme director Graeme Parsonage, who was widely credited for the station’s success.  

Others include Wayne Douglas, Mike Richardson and perhaps the best known, Murray “Muzza” Inglis, who was still broadcasting on his own suburban radio station in Auckland until he died this year, aged 80.

In a famous stunt in 1977 Inglis threw a tantrum on air, apparently in an argument with management over his contract renewal. He locked himself in the studio and continued to broadcast by himself for 48 hours.

At the time, very few station staff knew it was a stunt and the story made headlines around the world.

Shanahan, who joined the announcing team later in 1973, remembers some of the tricks they employed to increase audiences ratings.

“We used to play the records at a higher speed to create more pace,” he said. “Not enough that the audience would notice, but enough to give the station a more lively sound – 45s were played at 48rpm and LPs at 35rpm instead of 33.”

Another original on-air personality was Lee Hanner, who moved into the Lyttelton Timeball Station with his family when the city council was looking for a live-in manager. 

After the Timeball was badly damaged in the February 22, 2011 earthquake, Hanner talked about his time there and how it fitted in perfectly with his 8pm-to-midnight shift at Radio Avon.

“I’d get home about one in the morning and, with moonlight over the harbour, walking up to the building felt like going back 100 years,” he said.

In 1989, tragedy struck when journalist John Foy and his former de facto wife Jill Cardwell were murdered in Cardwell’s Wainoni home. Cardwell’s boyfriend was convicted of the double murder. Foy had joined Radio Avon in 1974

before leaving to become chief reporter for Independent Radio News. His estate later established an annual award for young radio journalists at the New Zealand Broadcasting School.

In 1998, a radio documentary The Rise and Fall of Radio Avon was produced by NZBS radio student Richard Holstein. It can be heard at www.tinyurl.com/radioavon

By Tony Simons