Radio Hauraki Expected To Be Making Profit Soon

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31322, 18 March 1967, Page 16

Radio Hauraki Expected To Be Making Profit Soon

"Th« Press” Special Service AUCKLAND, March 17. "The good guys” at the top of the dial wei'e expected to clear establishment costs of Auckland’s, pirate radio station, Radio Hauraki, and begin making a modest profit by the end of May, said the managing director, Mr D. J. Gapes. Station staff are now devoting the same energy employed to put the officially-unwanted transmitter on the air to a search for advertising. The result has been a 500 per cent increase in advertising in the past month alone. The increase may seem large, but according to Mr Gapes it is only a beginning. “It must be realised that, at first, we carried little advertising. This was largely because, through lack of organisation and, it must be admitted, inefficiency, we made no effort to seek it.

“All that has now changed. We have split the advertising department in two and provided a sales department, with four men permanently on the lookout for advertising.” Radio Hauraki has come a long way since the day when the scow Tiri tried to bore her way through a police blockade to sea or her idealistic founders were cleared of charges in the Auckland Magistrate’s Coourt. Finances Improve A former journalist, Mr Gapes is no longer scratching to provide wages for his staff (now approaching 50 from the former band of 20) but he still has to watch the pennies. The top wage being paid is a modest £2O a week.

There are now eight announcers where once there were four, and the day of the seven-day working week is a thing of the past. But it is still a tough job, working stripped to the waist in the 86-degree heat of the Anzac Avenue studio recording programmes, selecting music, writing up work logs and compering outside stage shows.

Another studio, with alltransistor equipment, is on the drawing board, to supplement the small room now in use 20 hours a day.. To bring

it into being could cost Radio Hauraki between £3OOO and £4OOO, even though a lot of the equipment is already on hand. Tape recorders alone—and they need several—will cost £5OO each. More money is being spent on installing a new diesel generating plant in the Tiri, moored off Great Barrier Island, to provide more reliable power, and better moorings for the ship.

“The trouble with this outfit is that we are not only running a radio station, we are also a shipping company and in the flying business,” said Mr Gapes. (Radio Hauraki uses a private aircraft—costing about £8 an hour—to ship supplies to the Tiri and provide a surf patrol and shark warning service to bath- ■ ers at weekends.) Land Station Sought 1 “We have not lost sight of the fact that our ultimate aim is to get a land-based station going,” said Mr Gapes. “If the Government, as has been suggested, sets up an independent licensing authority I expect we will apply for a licence and be just as eligible perhaps more so, than anybody else. “We don’t want to stay out there in the gulf forever. I think we have proved that we can run a radio station successfully. We have certainly increased the public’s awareness of radio as a separate entertainment and advertising medium. “The pirate radio image is disappearing fast and’we are starting to achieve acceptance. People no longer look at us strangely when we say we are from Radio Hauraki.” Mr Gapes has no fears that Hauraki will be “legislated off the air.” He recalls the Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) saying that he would like to see the station get a licence and points out that it already handles a certain amount of official advertising. The Listeners What of the listeners? The majority of those who have troubled to write to the station have praised it, as was expected. Quite a number, however, find the term “good guys,” used frequently on the air and in advertising, irritating. Mr Gapes is awaiting the results of an audience survey, completed recently, which could prove surprising in some quarters. It will be the second made by the station

(the first was made before it went on the air in December).

He expects it will contain figures fairly close to these: Listeners tuned to Radio Hauraki, about 55 per cent; housewives listening, over 50 per cent; people under 16 years, close to 100 per cent; 16 to 20 years, 75 per cent; 20 to 25 years, 60 per cent: 25 to 35 years, less than 50 per cent; over 35 years, slightly better. The station has a weak spot, during the breakfast session, when it can claim no more than 30 to 35 per cent of listeners, mainly because of a lack of news broadcasts and the fact that three Auckland stations are broadcasting the same sort of programme. Heard In Alaska One spot where it is succeeding is the 1480 Club, established by Radio Hauraki for its listeners, who pay £1 to join in return for shopping and entertainment discounts and the chance of visits to the studio and the Tiri or a spotter plane flight. Membership so far totals 2000 and plans call for it to go as high as 10,000 or more. Most of the station’s listeners live in a circle embracing Whangarei, northern Waikato and Whakatane, although there is nation-wide reception at night.

Strangely enough, Norfolk Island and New Caledonia can pick up the two kilowatt station by day. There have also been reception reports from right round the Pacific basin, from Alaska to Chile and Japan to Australia.