Chris Nicoll, ZM Radio, The Radio Network, Auckland, New Zealand
This month’s RAP Interview makes a stop for the first time in New Zealand to check out a newcomer to the world of imaging. Chris Nicoll is only 23, but has already nabbed some national radio production awards, has made some impressive contributions to the RAP CD, and finds himself imaging New Zealand’s top rated CHR format at ZM Radio. We get a look at New Zealand radio, introduce Chris to the international world of radio production, and get a remarkable sampler from Chris on this month’s RAP CD. This is one imaging producer we’re sure to hear more from for years to come.
JV: How did you get started in this business, and how did you wind up at The Radio Network?
Chris: About three and a half years ago I finished at a broadcasting school in Christchurch, where I kind of learned the trade of ads and announcing and promotions. It was like a two-year overview of the complete industry, certainly in New Zealand. Through that time we did little bits of everything; in our first year we ran a seventies music radio station that broadcast to the city of Christchurch in the South Island. Then in our second year, we set up a kids’ radio station. At the time we didn’t know about Radio Disney, but it was kind of the same sort of thing, just aimed at five to twelve year olds, the under surveyed lot of people, and that was so much fun. I got into imaging at that time after discovering Dave Foxx at Z100. Across the rest of that year, I spent my time doing lots of imaging in my bedroom at home where I had a computer.
In the end, when my study time had finished, I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to move to Auckland, which is kind of like the radio central of New Zealand. Most stations are networked across the country from Auckland, so it’s like the place to be in a way. I was lucky enough to land an ad producing gig here at The Radio Network, and that kind of began my development, in terms of getting into writing and stuff, and moving through the ranks here into my current position.
At the time when I started, I was just an intern, and we had four engineers. I just kind of picked up the slack, or I would work outside of their hours to get extra stuff done. I’d take up extra projects, go to clients and do affidavits, or get some recordings of stuff for the other engineers, stuff they didn’t necessarily have the time for. Then one of them left to go overseas, and I kind of jumped in and filled the gap.
JV: Was this something that you wanted to do right after you got out of school?
Chris: When I got out of school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My dad’s a scientist and my mom worked in banks and various administrative roles. I didn’t want to be a scientist, and I didn’t really want to be doing admin or anything like that. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but here was this radio thing. This guy came to my school and said, “Here’s radio, isn’t it exciting? And I went, “You know what? It actually is. That looks like fun.” So I moved from where I was living at the time in Hamilton, to Christchurch and studied. When I got there, I wanted to be a jock. My class was a bunch of misfits and they were very extreme personalities. I suddenly realized quite quickly that I was actually the quiet guy, and I was going to have to find something else. So I decided that production was something I could easily pick up and do, because I had sort of been into computers and music and stuff in the past. I just kind of stumbled into it I guess, but I’m glad I did. No way I’d go back and change things and try to be a jock. There’s hardly any jobs for jocks; certainly here in New Zealand there aren’t a lot.
JV: Is everybody voice tracking?
Chris: Actually we do a lot of voice tracking. I know that our morning shows are live, but definitely across the days there’s voice tracking. Here at ZM we have a girl, Sarah Gandy, who’s also same age as I am and is on the air. She’s amazing, and she does two shows at the same time, sometimes three. She voice tracks for Auckland specifically, and then she also does at the same time a show for the rest of the network to a majority of the rest of our markets so that we can have a localized Auckland show. We have a million people in Auckland, and then the other three point something million in New Zealand are based in the rest of the country, but not in one city. So it makes sense to have a local show and a network show so she can localize a lot of her giveaways and competitions and things. So she voice tracks.
We also have sort of like the Howard Stern of New Zealand, perhaps slightly more reined in. I don’t know if anyone’s ever heard of him, but his name is Ian Stables. He is a little bit of a shock jock, but he’s very, very good at what he does, and he does it live. And then we have a night show and they tend to do most of their stuff as a combination between tracking and live.
JV: Tell us a little about The Radio Network and radio in New Zealand in general.
Chris: There are two major players here in New Zealand. The Radio Network is co-owned by Clear Channel, and it has in New Zealand maybe eight or nine stations, ZM being one of them. When I started back in the creative department, I was producing ads for all of the brands that we own. We have a single department that looks after all the stations. The Radio Network’s brands span from talk to the CHR brands. I think the only brand that’s kind of missing from New Zealand entirely is an Alt. Rock brand. We have Classic Rock and just a standard rock I suppose.
Then we have another company called Radio Works which owns maybe the same amount, seven or eight stations, which are also networked across the country. Radio Works is owned by CanWest, and they also own a few TV stations here in New Zealand.
JV: Has New Zealand radio gone through changes similar to deregulation in the US?
Chris: Yes. Back in the eighties there was a big shift — gosh, I was only five or six at the time. Back then everything was owned by the government and they were regulating. There was in fact one of our stations, Radio Hauraki, that was a pirate radio station that actually broadcast from a ship in the Hauraki Gulf, which is south of Auckland. I’m not very good with my geography, but they covered a fair area from the Gulf. They sat just outside of the New Zealand border, so they couldn’t be charged I suppose, and they broadcast into New Zealand from a ship. So with that and a few other small instances of pirate radio, the government decided to open up and sell the airwaves. They called it deregulation here. That just opened the floodgates, and suddenly there were thousands of stations. Then they got bought up ultimately by the two companies we have now. There are only a few little community stations and a few what I call family run stations here and there around the country.
JV: Let’s talk a bit about ZM. How are the station’s ratings?
Chris: Well, it’s really funny because we just have these two players, so it gets broken down very much into the company versus company philosophy I suppose. ZM is broadcast to seventeen markets around the country, but not all of those are surveyed. I think we’re number one in Wellington, which is the capitol city of New Zealand. In Auckland, I think we’re number four or five, maybe the number three music station but number five overall behind a talk-back station, which my company owns, and a hip-hop and rap station. We have a high population of Polynesian people in Auckland, so that station rates really, really well. And the Classic Hits format, which we also own, does really well. One of our rock formats does really well also; we’ve got quite a lot of industrial areas south of Auckland which the rock format does quite well in. But number five is pretty good. Our main competitors are behind us, which is nice.
JV: What’s your title and what are your responsibilities?
Chris: On my contract it says Studio Engineer, but the roles that I look after encompass writing the imaging — not necessarily all the sweepers, sometimes the PD team looks after that — but definitely writing trailers and coming up with ideas for those, liaising with the promotions department, writing occasional scripts to get approved from the clients, who often send it back, and also producing everything, organizing and managing it all so it gets to air. We use the NexGen system over here, so I’m putting everything in, assigning the numbers, making sure it’s on the right rotate and deal with all that sort of stuff. And I take as much off the PD, in terms of imaging, as I can. But my duties are primarily imaging ZM.
JV: How did you develop your style of imaging?
Chris: Gosh, I guess the only thing I can say is that the people who got me into it are kind of where I got my style. People like Dave Foxx, who was the first imaging engineer that I ever sat down and listened to a whole reel of his stuff and went, “Wow.” From there, I got into people like Jeff Thomas, and I loved some of his work. Then I discovered a guy called Will Morgan who is at K-Rock in LA. I love that station, and I just loved some of the stuff that he did. I guess from there I just started soaking up all of the different styles that all of the people have done. I’ve sort of tried to tap into bits and pieces here and there and carve my own niche I suppose.
We are adopting down here the “Less Is More” philosophy as well. We’ve kind of been doing it on and off for a couple of years, but every now and again, the big long emotional promo will slip through. It’s an evolving process, and I’m just trying to soak up as many different things to hopefully eventually land at something that lots of people like.
JV: What is your approach to doing a promo?
Chris: Well first of all, we’re very lucky we have two great voice-over artists that actually work here in the building, which is excellent. I can grab them within reason whenever I need. Ultimately an idea will come through for a promotion, and I will try and get someone who doesn’t have a really good grasp on the whole element of radio, and I will sit down and brainstorm ideas with them and see what interests them. I’ll try and get away with someone who might listen to our station, and if I can’t do that, maybe I’ll just flick some emails to some friends and see what they think, just get some ideas floating around about a particular promo. From there, I’ll take some of the best ideas and write up a few scripts. If it needs approval from a client, it goes to them. If the approval’s given, it goes to the studio and I’ll record it and start piecing it together. Usually things kind of morph when they get to the studio because your ideas don’t carry as well, or you find you don’t have said effects that you wanted, or you need to create something slightly different.
JV: How do you know when you have a good promo? When are you satisfied with it?
Chris: I don’t think I’m ever satisfied to be honest. But when I write the scripts and come up with a good one, it kind of gets the back of my neck tingling. I remember a promo we did a while back sending people to London, or maybe it was New York, to see U2. The promo just painted a picture of how amazing they are as a band. It was just a case of saying some really interesting facts about the band. I think we started out with some lines like, “From when they started in the seventies to today, no one has ever left the band; no one has joined it. They’ve earned the title the world’s greatest band…”, something along those lines. But sometimes I’ll write things and go, “Yeah, that really speaks to me.” Or if you run it by some friends or talk to someone who might listen to your station who’s in the demograph, and they go, “That’s cool. I’ve got tingly neck hairs when you say that.” or “I really love that line, it really speaks to me.” That’s when kind of go, “Yeah, that’s cool.”
Then when you get into the studio and you put it together, I guess you’re done when you can listen to the whole promo and sit there and just smile and go, “Yeah, that feels good,” like I really feel like I’ve nailed that. Then other times you get close to the deadlines and you’re like, “Oh man, I have to get this on the air.” It sounds good but I’d change certain things about it if I had the time. So you put it to air and you keep working on it and then just reload it once you’ve got it where you like. That tends to happen; we’ll put things on the air on ZM, and go, “You know, this could be modified slightly to be just that little bit better.” So we’ll change it and drop it back in as soon as we can.
JV: Finish this sentence: “I do my best work when…”
Chris: I do my best work when I’m really organized and get a good night’s sleep. Looking at computer screens all day, I get twitchy eyes if I look at them too long and if I don’t sleep right.
JV: What do you do to get the creative juices flowing?
Chris: Actually I listen to a lot of music. A lot of music. I don’t know why, but for some reason it just relaxes me, and I hear things and go, “That’s a really cool idea” or “That’s a cool bit I could use in a promo.” Certainly from a production perspective, I listen to as much music as I can and soak up that. I’ll also find work that other people have done, either off the RAP CD or using various Clear Channel resources. We subscribe to ChaseCuts which is great. I’ll download some of that stuff and have a listen and get inspired. I find that’s a good way to get my juices running.
Writing-wise, I guess just watching everyday life gets things going for me. Just go for a drive or go for a walk around the block and see something and go, “That’s cool; I’ve got to remember that.” Sometimes the ultimate place of contemplation is the toilet, where you sit there and you’ve got nothing else to do but your business and think. You can come up with some really, really strange stuff. Like this morning, I came up with three really ridiculous promo ideas that we probably won’t run with because they’re a little extreme, but one I thought of was “Toilet to Let,” where you could rent out a toilet for a week to someone and they can’t leave the toilet at all; they have to stay there the whole time. The other idea was something like Kitty Litter for Kuala Lumpur, where you either win a trip to Kuala Lumpur or you win your weight in kitty litter. It’s not my role to come up with ideas like that, but I would just happen to be contemplating and that’s what came out. I went and told PD and we might move on them. But checking out everyday life I certainly think is one of the best ways to get the creative juices going. Reading random stuff is another way. Those forwarded emails you always get; they’re so annoying, but you should read them because there’s always something in there where you go, “Hey, actually that is kind of funny” or “I see what they’re trying to do, maybe I can do something better.”
JV: Tell us about your studio.
Chris: I’ve just moved into a new studio. It’s nice and big. I was in a little two by four box before. We work off Nuendo, which is really, really good for media. I have a Pro Tools set up at home, and I actually don’t like doing radio stuff on Pro Tools as much as I do on Nuendo. I find Nuendo much easier. It’s a fantastic program, and the best thing about Nuendo is — we run off PCs here — if I want to find a new, crazy plug-in, like something that no one else will have, I can jump on the net and go to www.vstcentral.com. They’ve got six hundred plus different plug-ins that I can download for free and use for free. I’ll get some weird effects and use them, and then a couple of weeks later I’ll go find another one. That’s one of the best things about using Nuendo on the PCs for us, and also it’s just a beautiful system to work on; it’s really fast. Other than that, in here I have a telephone, a pair of JBL speakers which is quite nice; I have a couch which is rare, but very exciting. It means I can use it after hours for sleep, and of course video players and DAT players and CD players and an assortment of crazy keyboards and stuff. I do a little bit of sound design here on the side, just to give us a different sound to anyone else. I use the keyboards and radios to get static from and make some crazy noises.
JV: Ever hope to put together a library of these noises for everybody?
Chris: I was sort of aiming to do so, but it takes so long. A lot of my time is spent making all the work parts up, and I don’t necessarily have the time to look at creating a web service sort of thing. It’s certainly something I’d like to do in the future, but I think it’s probably going to be a couple of years down the track, when I’ve got a lot of effects.
JV: What are your greatest challenges right now?
Chris: I guess the greatest challenge is always trying to have a goal to work towards. I find I don’t work well unless I have a goal to achieve, and for the last couple of years, my goal has been to win some New Zealand Radio Awards. This year I picked some up, and now I’m kind of at a loss as to what I want to do next.
JV: Tell us about your awards.
Chris: Well there were a few categories that I entered, Best Promotional or Image Trailer, Station Imaging, and Best Commercial or Trailer. I had four nominations in these three categories and I picked up all three, which was amazing and very embarrassing all at the same time. I’m not much of a speech giver, and gosh, they make you go up and give speeches. I’d rather just wave at people and stay sitting to be honest. But it was amazing, and I was so humbled. I couldn’t believe it. But having done that now, it’s kind of like you’re only as good as your last award or only as good as your last promo. I completely agree with that. I’ll do the New Zealand Radio Awards again next year, but let’s see what else I can go for.
JV: How much work are you doing out of the home studio?
Chris: Not as much nowadays. When I was doing stuff outside of the hours of my day job of doing ads a couple years ago, it certainly got used, and I have done a little bit of freelance stuff here and there out of my home studio. But it’s sitting gathering dust nowadays because I have the luxury of my own studio, which I have access to twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. I don’t need the home studio so much at the moment.
JV: You came into the business in 2002 or thereabouts. The technical revolution in audio production had already exploded and most of the dust had already settled. You probably have never worked on an analog reel-to-reel machine, have you?
Chris: Never. I’ll tell you what though; I bought one for ten bucks, and I was going to use it, just to see what it was like. Some of the other production engineers in the building are aficionados at tape; that’s all they’ve known, and computers are so foreign to them. Every now and again, you’ve got to go to the other studios and show them various things you can do on the computer because it’s a little bit beyond them, which is completely understandable. Tape is just so foreign to me. I bought it and then I sold it because I decided, “No, I don’t think I even want to try.” It was an Otari MX5050 2-track. I think I sold it for a hundred. If that makes people cry, sorry about that.
JV: What is your first recollection of working on a computer or being on a computer?
Chris: The first time I used a computer, I would have been about five. I was born in ‘83, so it was 1988. My dad brought home an old Apple Mac from work for the weekend so that we could all play some new fancy computer game that he got for it. That’s my first ever memory. Then maybe two years later, we had our own computer at home, and my first ever foray into music with a computer would have been when I was about twelve, in terms of recording and messing around with stuff.
JV: Are you a musician?
Chris: I am as well, yes. I wouldn’t say I’m a good one, but I can play a variety of things well enough to record them and have a laugh at myself.
JV: How many producers are there at your facility?
Chris: We have myself and I look after ZM, and I actually look after another station, which is Radio Sports, for a couple hours a week here and there. Then we have four commercial engineers and that’s it. A lot of our imaging is farmed out to a couple of freelancers based here in Auckland. I’m the only full-time imaging guy on staff. One of the commercial engineers does half a day of commercials and half a day of imaging for our hip-hop brand. Her name is Megan, and she is outstanding. She’s going to be huge.
JV: Any plans for the future, or are you pretty content doing what you’re doing at this stage of the game?
Chris: Yeah, I think I really love this. It’s so much fun. There’s an element of day-to-day stuff, but there’s always something different happening or I’m always constantly trying to learn something new. I never went to a school where it taught you all about EQ and compression or anything. I just used the net to learn, so I still surf the net for new ideas and tips and tricks and stuff. I guess I just want to keep doing this and keep getting better, and I’d quite like it to help me see the world somehow, but I haven’t figured out how that’s going to work yet.
