User:LXSWRX/898 FM

898FM/Kiwi FM/The Breeze/89.8 ZM

898 FM (call-sign 1JJJ) was launched on 4 June 1984, making it New Zealand's fourth full-time commercial FM radio station. The station was originally housed with sister station Radio Waikato at 169 London Street, Hamilton.

HISTORY

898 FM boasted one of the largest FM coverage areas in the country which was reflected in the station's positioning statement, "Coast to Coast". This area consisted of the greater Waikato region (including the Coromandel Peninsula, King Country and Taupo), as well as the western Bay Of Plenty (including Tauranga, Mt. Maunganui and parts of Rotorua).Around 1986, 898 FM became known as 898 Kiwi FM, which was eventually shortened to Kiwi FM. The station's call-sign was also changed from 1JJJ to 1KIW.In August 1988, Kiwi FM began broadcasting on a second frequency (93.4 FM) in Tauranga and the western Bay Of Plenty. This frequency provided better coverage to areas that were sheltered from the existing signal (on 89.8 FM) from Mt. Te Aroha. The 93.4 FM frequency was sold to Tauranga station Coastline FM in October 1990, meaning Kiwi FM's Tauranga listeners had to tune back to 89.8 FM. Although 898 FM was based in Hamilton, the station's coverage area included Tauranga and the western Bay Of Plenty due to the location of its transmitter on Mt. Te Aroha. 898 FM's impressive coverage area was reflected in its on-air positioning statement "Coast to Coast".

The Breeze

The Breeze first started in Auckland, Waikato and Wellington in 1993 when then owner Independent Broadcasting Company rebranded local stations 91FM (Auckland), Kiwi 898FM (Waikato) and Windy FM (Wellington) to The Breeze. The Auckland and Waikato stations previously played a Hit Music format and were changed to a Hot AC format using the slogan "Not Too Heavy, Not Too Soft." Wellington was different where Windy FM had been playing Classic Rock prior to rebranding and changed to the Easy Listening format used all on The Breeze stations today. All three The Breeze stations operated separately from each with local shows in each market. In 1995 The Breeze in Wellington was sold to the MORE FM Group and in 1996 the parent company of The Breeze in Auckland and Waikato was sold to Prospect Limited. Prospect Limited was then at the end of 1996 sold to The Radio Network. In 1997 The Radio Network closed down The Breeze in Auckland and Waikato and used these frequencies to start 91ZM in Auckland and 89.8ZM in Waikato. For Auckland this was a return of ZM as the station had been absent from the Auckland market since 1987.

The Breeze continued to broadcast in Wellington after the Auckland and Waikato stations closed down, by 2000 the station was now owned by CanWest along with MORE FM and Channel Z, CanWest then purchased RadioWorks and in 2001 The Breeze became part of RadioWorks collection of local once off station known as LocalWorks.

The Breeze made a return to Waikato in 2003 when local station Y 99.3 was rebranded as The Breeze retaining Y 99.3 local announcer but changing music format from Adult Contemporary to the Easy Listening format used on The Breeze in Wellington. In 2004 The Breeze was rolled out to other regions around New Zealand by rebranding existing stations as The Breeze and in some cases even changing the format of the local station to Easy Listening. In April 2007 many of The Breeze stations had local shows or shows that were fed from a nearby region replaced with a network show based from the Auckland studio, creating a network allowed The Breeze to then launch in other markets such as Hawkes Bay, Bay of Plenty and Southland. For most regions where The Breeze launched after 2007 the breakfast show was local but not a live show instead a pre-recorded show featuring mostly music and very little talk from the announcer and in most cases actually presented by the RadioWorks Programme Director for that region. In March 2009 a live networked breakfast show was introduced the show was presented from a second studio in Auckland separate from the main The Breeze studios as Auckland continued to present their own local breakfast exclusive to Auckland, this show first presented by Pete Ashdown and later Tony Murrell. The networked breakfast could only be heard in regions that previously had a local voice tracked breakfast show, regions with a live breakfast show were not affected. In 2010 the networked breakfast was replaced with the Auckland breakfast show presented by The Two Robbies.

89.8 ZM 

Originally transmitting from Mt. Te Aroha, 89.8 ZM boasted one of the largest FM coverage areas in the country which was reflected in the station's positioning statement, "Coast to Coast". This area consisted of the greater Waikato region (including the Coromandel Peninsula, King Country and Taupo), as well as the western Bay Of Plenty (including Tauranga, Mt. Maunganui and parts of Rotorua).

In the early 2000s, 89.8 ZM's transmitter was removed from Mt. Te Aroha and replaced by two separate transmitters (one for Hamilton/Waikato and one for Tauranga/Bay Of Plenty). This enabled each region to hear market-specific advertising and information. The Waikato frequency remained on 89.8 where the Bay of Plenty was first on 89.8 but later adjusted to 89.4.

The station is now known on-air as Waikato's 89-8 ZM and in Tauranga it is known as Bay of Plenty's 89-4 ZM.

Tech Talk

Kiwi's on-air studio featured a Poul Kirk CSC-1 console made by Poul Kirk Electronics of Australia. Ads (and some music) were played out using four TOMCAT brand cart machines and later they added two Otari CTM-10 cart machines. From the first day on air, much of the music was played on the studio's two Technics SP10-MKII turntables with SME3012 tonearms and Stanton Cartridges.

As CDs started to become more available, two domestic Denon CD players were added to the studio. Phone calls to the station's competition line were answered on a Symetrix 104A 4-line telephone system. In 1991 the two Denon CD players were retired and two broadcast-quality Denon DN-950FA CD Cart players were installed. Audio in the studio was heard on a pair of JBL 4412 studio monitors, fed by a Perreaux PMF2150B power amplifier. DJs' voices were heard via the Sennheiser MD-421 microphone.

Program from the studio was processed in the later years by an Orban Optimod 8100A/1, which was fed by a pair of Texar Audio Prisms. The processed audio was sent to the top of the building where it was fed into a Moseley PCL-600 STL transmitter and fired off to the Te Aroha transmission site some 50 km away to the east. Once there, it was fed into a Harris 10kW transmitter then up the tower to the radiator panels which gave an effective radiated power of 50,000 watts. The main and standby transmitters were able to be remotely controlled from the studios with a Moseley MRC1620 remote control system. Back in the control room, modulation was observed on a QEI 691 modulation monitor, and audio levels via an RME 451M1 LED level monitor.

Production was done in a studio shared by Kiwi FM and Radio Pacific Waikato. The mixing console was a Tascam M-320B and tracks were laid down on an Otari MX-5050 1/2" 8-track recorder. Mastering down on an Otari MX-5050 BII 1/4" 2-track. Voice tracks were recorded using a Neumann U87 condenser microphone. Ads were then transferred to carts using a TOMCAT recording cart machine.