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This page contains specific information on various shows, announcers, and the playlist from Contact 89FM at various times.

Rohan Marx and Jessie Mulligan hosted Friday drive, which had much more talk than other drive shows. The show became well-known for Rohan’s interviews with his mother, Janice Marx, in the Otorohanga Report. This was a live version of a column which Rohan had done for Nexus a couple of years earlier.[1])

The show was also famous for the sponsor’s $5 specials. Each week Nick from ERB would have an on-air slot with Rohan in which he would trot through the week’s in-store specials, but everyone was waiting for the big news. At the end of the slot, Nick would announce a $5 special available to the first 20 Contact listeners at the counter. The product would vary (often a dozen Export Gold beers or a bottle of Count Pushkin “vodka”). The $5 special became more and more of an institution as canny listeners grew to know the time of the special and so would drive to the Eastside and wait in the carpark as soon as they heard Nick’s voice. Some people started wearing radios with headphones inside Robbie Burns so that they could be sure to secure the special.

Jessie left the station suddenly in 1996 to go to The Edge as a roving reporter on the breakfast show. Dean Ballinger replaced Jessie, and the show became known as Eastside Robbie Burns Friday drive.

General shows

Daytime shows changed from 2 hours to 3 hours in 1996 (10am-1pm and 1-4pm instead of 10-12, 12-2 and 2-4). These shows had about two-thirds playlist and one third free choice/requests.

All-nighters

Prior to 1996, Contact had used a 5 disc CD changer for midnight to dawn. The CD player was unreliable and would often stick. Late night announcers would sometimes program it incorrectly so that it played sequentially rather than randomly, or would play just one song for 6 hours.

From the start of 1996 Contact used a live feed from the BBC World Service. The John Peel show was recorded from this and replayed on Wednesday evenings. The station returned to the 5 disc changer when it decided not to renew the rights to the World Service feed in 1997.

Announcers "in training" were typically required to run "all-nighter" shows, whereby they ran shows through the night to aid in their training.

Breakfast shows (1996) Rocket Coffee provided free breakfasts (coffee and a bagel or muffin) for the breakfast show hosts as part of the subcard sponsorship in 1996. One of the sales reps would stop at Rocket to collect the breakfast and it would arrive at the studio at about 9am. There was usually an audible difference in the show at 9am when the hosts became caffeinated. There were more voicebreaks, shorter gaps between songs, the announcers played louder music and spoke faster (and always gave sincere on-air thanks to Rocket for the breakfast).

The breakfast shows were hosted by:
Monday – Scott Newth
Tuesday – TerrorFuzz (Mark and Julian)
Wednesday – Clare O’Connell and Greg Baillie
Thursday – Karl Peterson and Ernie
Friday – Kevin Glover and Meredith Pearson

Drive shows (1996)

The drive shows were hosted by:
Monday – Julian
Tuesday – Marcus
Wednesday – Meredith Pearson
Thursday – Sarah Connolly
Friday – Rohan Marx and Dean Ballinger

1997

A major revision of the station’s format took place in mid-1997. The number of specialist shows was reduced further, a 2 hour general show (called Overdrive) was introduced in the evenings from 7-9pm, and single hosts were appointed for the breakfast and drive shows across all weekdays.

Breakfast show (7 to 10am)

The new breakfast show was hosted by Scott Newth. Clare O’Connell and Dean Ballinger shared news duties between them (with news slots at 7am, headlines at 7.30, news at 8 and 9). It was a standing joke that the news was always late, despite the best intentions of all involved. Clare later stopped doing the news and Dean took over all of the news presenting. The news involved a trawl around the internet, a flick through the Waikato Times and the odd story from The Onion. Kevin Glover started off producing the show, but co-hosted most of the shows with Dean when Scott was unable to make it.

The breakfast show had more talk (between Scott/Kevin and Dean) than had previously been the case, and made a conscious effort to have interviews.

Zane Egginton provided a surf report each morning, which he based on the weather forecast and tide tables. Zane had a degree in marine wave stuff, and loved to surf, so could not have been more qualified. Although he started out providing the surf report by phone, Zane started coming in to the studio and did some on-air voicebreaks.

Drive show (4 to 7pm)

Justin Harris became the permanent host of the drive show, in addition to working full-time as Promotions Manager. Dean and Clare read the news at 5pm. Rohan Marx and Dean Ballinger continued to host the Friday drive show.

The Gill songs At one point during Gill Dick's stint as Programme Director, she had an extended absence from the station. During that time the playlist was not changed. This meant that the high rotate songs were thrashed for up to 8 weeks. The songs which were on high rotate at the time became known as “the Gill Songs” because they would make announcers groan every time they heard them played. The songs included:
“Dark Therapy” by Echobelly
“Novacaine For The Soul” by eels
“This Family” by Magnapop
“Space” by Red Five

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