Town & Country Aotearoa: 25 years of continuous broadcasting

Town & Country Aotearoa

This Wellington Access Radio programme completes 25 years of continuous broadcasting on Monday 22nd August 2016. Veteran broadcaster, Eddie O'Strange, has hosted the 2-hour, weekly, live presentation from its beginning. It's always been in theMonday night slot. Originally it often ran to 5-or-6 hours duration. The original AM transmitter reached listeners in the Chatham Islands, Norfolk Island and the east coast of Australia: Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales. Over its first two decades, it provided experience for up to 2-dozen presenters, including for the then-upcoming local iwi station. The programme itself was the result of Hutt Valley country music fans asking Eddie to champion their kind of music.

Eddie was originally asked to provide a programme at Wellington Access in the early 1980s. He provided a series on songwriting, featuring a number of NZ's professional musicians. He's presented from all 5 studios the station has used in its 35 years of existence. To launch Town & Country, he organised a concert which overflowed both levels of the Hutt Town Hall.

The programme first went to air on Monday 2nd September 1991. A show has never been missed but one disappeared off-air half-way through because snow shut down the transmitter. It amassed thousands of listeners, and inspired many country music programmes and local stations, from all around the North and South Islands. (The Broadcasting Act of 1989 radically altered radio's rules and regulations.) Eddie was treated as a novice's mentor and consultant.

Today the programme is distributed widely, and available in a number of contemporary ways. The changes in radio and how radio is now consumed, and the mature listeners who the programme appeals to, are acknowledged and have necessarily shaped the current format. It also adds value to local stations without competing with, or duplicating, their local content.

The following statistics include the two new stations due to broadcast it early in its 26th year. (Another two stations scheduled to be on-air in the next two or three months are not included.)

Town & Country Aotearoa
CURRENT STATISTICS:

Terrestrial broadcasts:
The programme is broadcast by 16 licensed and unlicensed, non-commercial stations.
This provides a total of 48 hours of terrestrial broadcasting per week.

Internet broadcasts:
The programme is live-streamed from 10 stations' websites.
This provides a total of 42 hours of internet broadcasting per week.

Podcasts:
The most recent 12 weeks of programmes are freely available as podcasts.
This provides 24 hours of on-line listening, or downloading, available to anyone.

Annual broadcasts:
There are 53 unique 2-hour programmes generated each year.
52 are live presentations on Monday nights from 9 pm .....
PLUS one pre-recorded End-Of-Year programme for stations whose staff are on holiday.
(The extra programme is also uploaded as a free podcast. It may be used by any station.)

Station locations:
Dargaville (& Ruawai), Thames, Hastings, New Plymouth, Marton, Fielding, Foxton Beach,
Paraparaumu, Featherston, Tawa, Wellington, Christchurch, Gore, Dunedin, Invercargill.

- ends

© Scoop Media