I was appointed and I had the selling skills but I needed the product knowledge. This was a different style of selling because what I was to sell was an intangible product, TIME.

Change in the radio industry
In the early seventies there was no competition until Radio Avon began broadcasting in the mid seventies. When private radio came to the fore business in the media in New Zealand was radically changed, not only because of the competition but because of the technical changes that were progressively introduced from this point. Faxes, computers, cellphones and more media choices meant that the media world changed rapidly from a dinosaur to a state of the art business. With this change came the most aggressive competitive techniques in selling.

There were campaigns to get advertisers to buy air time in bulk for a committed amount per annum instead of the advertising budget being divided among radio, print, movie and pamphlets.

In the mid eighties I worked for Radio Avon for some years and became experienced in the ways of private radio. In Rotorua I was employed to put a new radio station on air, one of the first private stations in the region. Although private radio had begun in the mid seventies the provincial stations were still closed shop - only Radio New Zealand operated away from the main centres. I had to build the station from the ground up. I was new to Rotorua and knew nobody there. I was faced with empty offices and no client base. I had to furnish the offices, find accommodation for myself, employ reps, and establish a client base, all done thinking on my feet - and I had two weeks to complete the whole job. Radio New Zealand had a stranglehold so it was a case of thinking "outside the square". I was there to prove a point - that the public were ready for a change - and they were!

I received a Mobil award on two occasions for the best on-air promotion. I had designed the promotion and tailor-made it for the business being advertised. The result was increased public awareness of the product and increased sales. The products advertised were very different. One offered bakery products which were supplied to supermarkets and wanted to develop awareness of their brand name - Yardleys. The other was McKenzie and Willis, a furniture business.

In the late eighties more and more frequencies were becoming available which was the start of the warmongering for total power and dominance in the broadcasting industry. There were groups of privately owned radio stations working for control of the radio frequencies, and there were frequent takeovers by independent operators of small, either established or about-to-be-established, radio stations. For instance the Radio Otago group owned frequencies in Christchurch though they were based in Dunedin. In the North Island stations like Radio Pacific started buying up as many North Island frequencies as possible. Finally Radio Pacific bought out the Radio Otago group. By then Radio Pacific was known as Radio Works. Radio Works presently own The Edge, The Rock, Solid Gold, Radio Pacific, C93, and I94.

All those stations are now available in every centre in New Zealand. Two major players - Radio New Zealand and Radio Works - now have almost total power over radio in New Zealand. However, Radio Works are now owned 100% by Canwest, which is a Canadian group, and Canwest also owns MoreFM, TV3 and TV4.

Power has become the key word in the radio industry - not power to the people, but power to the Fat Cats. Once again the rich are getting richer.

Change again to Home Shows
I wanted to try something different and became involved in a very successful new venture in Auckland putting on Interior/Exterior Home Shows. Then many of the exhibitors decided to put on their own Home Shows, so that venture came to an end.

Recreating the old piecart
Always an adventurous entrepreneur, in 1992 I joined with two partners to set up a piecart in the centre of Christchurch. The earlier piecarts had closed. The reason for the demise of the earlier piecarts in Christchurch was the local burger bars which had opened in the suburbs in the sixties. The Christchurch City Council put such strict food hygiene regulations on those burger bars that their owners insisted that the same regulations apply to the piecarts. The owners of the piecarts were reluctant to spend the money involved in meeting the regulations and chose to close instead.

After some months delay waiting for a permit from the Christchurch City Council we were given permission to open in Latimer Square. We bought an old Transport Board Bus. We converted the front into a kitchen and had a counter where the back door is, leaving the back of the bus free for up to twenty one diners to sit.

This bus offered much more comfort than the old style of piecart where diners had to stand to eat at the counter, with only the upper body protected by the canopy. I remember someone telling me after they had eaten at the piecart that the food was fine but the draught around the legs had to be felt to be believed. Our diners sat in the bus at tables and could choose from a varied menu. They could order the traditional "Pea, Pie and Pud" ('pud' being potato) with onion, beetroot, and real gravy (not out of a packet), or they could have steak, eggs, fish fried or grilled, or mixed grills. Customers could eat in or take away their meal. Free coffee was offered with all orders. We were open seven days a week from 5 pm till 3 or 4 am. I did a great deal of the cooking and could comfortably handle two hundred meals in a night.

The Pie Cart Photo source John Spencer

Small businesses have difficulty surviving
The demise of the local burger bars several years after the piecarts closed was caused by the spread of the multinationals like Burger King, McDonalds, and Kentucky Fried which opened branches in the cities and the suburbs. Drive-ins made it even easier to obtain fast foods.

There is little room now for small businesses unless you are specialising in a sought-after product or service or are a franchisee.

Employment opportunities in the 50s, 60s and 70s reduced in the 80s and 90s
When young people were leaving school in the 50s, 60s and 70s they could get an apprenticeship and there was room to continue on with the business where they trained or go out and establish their own business in that same field. When in the late seventies and early eighties the change came, this country's governments and the hierarchies like the IRD have been partly responsible for the demise of many small business, because they have offered no incentives for tradespeople, medical people, or other professionals.

Successive governments have sold New Zealand down the tubes. A classic scenario is presented by the banks - all foreign owned, our lands, our railways, and our communications, our radio stations and our television.

What is there for the guy leaving school?
People wonder why young people are growing up with lippy, know-it-all attitudes. We can find this from five year olds to eighteen year olds. They claim to know it all, when they have had no experience of life. They are in for a shock when they face adult life in the new millennium. They are steeling themselves against what lies ahead and who can blame them? Our generation of opportunity/greed has turned society into what it is and that is reflecting on to the children.

The old refrains we used to hear don't work any more. "In my days" - no one wants to listen. "Wait till your father gets home" seldom works as so many children are growing up in a one-parent family.

The times, they have changed!!!

The gap in society
The gap is widening as the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and though we are told it is not so there seems to be one law for the rich and a different one for the others.

The pendulum swinging
It is not all doom and gloom. There was the drift to Auckland, but now there is a turning of the tide. The multinationals and the conglomerates took their businesses to Auckland or to Sydney where all the big players were. Right now there is the beginning of a return to interest in the South Island.

What will be written by those who grow up in the 2050s?
I wonder what will be said if someone takes this up and writes about growing up in New Zealand in the new millennium fifty years from now.

My mind can't comprehend the changes ahead as it has been catastrophic over the past five, four, three, two and now one year.

Can your mind cope?