Mike's Minute: Newstalk ZB is a success story

It's important I think to end the week with the good news.  The good news from an industry, you might have read, that has been creating a bit of bad news lately.  The media has troubles, newsrooms are being closed, programmes are being cancelled, people are being laid off, losses are mounting, hands are out for help and pleas are being made for you to see what some do on the local landscape as being important. So yes, it has been a bad year.  But against that backdrop the radio industry got together last night to hand out a few gongs and remind us all that there are no shortage of success stories.  This is the best station in the country. Not just that but we were awarded the title for the 4th year in a row.  This show has the best producers in the game.  This show has the best newsreader in the game.  This station has the best sport bloke on the weekends.  The eclectic guy at night from Bluff won for about the 8th year in a row and the news team were recognised for their Cyclone Gabrielle coverage.  More broadly, this company picked up an outsized number of awards given the competition. That is a bit not to be forgotten.  Radio in New Zealand is still, as far as I know, the most competitive market per head of population in the world. We have a pile of radio stations all chasing the audience and all chasing the dollar.  What radio is, is an example of how a market evolves. While some in the media grapple with change, radio did a lot of its changing a couple of decades back with deregulation and the arrival of FM.  We worked out what the audiences wanted and gave it to them.  It's ever evolving of course. But in a media landscape of so much upheaval there are plenty still doing fine thank you, and that needs to be better told.  Part of the problem with the media, in an irony of ironies, is their predilection for the negative. There are more media stories of success than there are of woe.  This show, on this station, in this company, is killing it. That’s not skiting, it's balancing the ledger a bit.  So you're listening to the best in the business. But you knew that.  A few judges just backed you up with silverware last night.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.