Radioinfo will celebrate its 30th birthday.<\/a><\/p>\nOf his early vision for Radioinfo, Steve says \u201cI just thought there was a need.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growing up in Sydney, Steve caught the radio bug early. His school just happened to be situated across the road from the studios of 2UE.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I was one of those kids who would bother them,\u201d he smiles. \u201cI learned the craft from a lot of great people there and got some casual work.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the early days of community radio. Steve was enjoying his involvement in the sector when his mum suggested he\u2019d need a \u2018real job.\u2019<\/p>\n
Completing a teaching degree, Steve says \u201cI went out to the bush and taught primary school in Brewarrina for a few years. And just down the road \u2013 now when I say \u2018just down the road,\u2019 I mean 100 kilometres of red dirt road \u2013 but just down the road was Bourke with a new community station called 2WEB and I volunteered to do weekend shifts there.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a few years of teaching, 2WEB offered Steve a full-time job.<\/p>\n
Steve looked forward to the days when the Monday edition of the Sydney Morning Herald was delivered, heading straight for the radio column.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, there\u2019s got to be some better way of reporting what\u2019s going on in this industry all around Australia, rather than waiting for some newspaper person to report it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve was interested in the business of radio, and how it was changing.<\/p>\n
His Radioinfo publication followed the newspaper model. Job ads. Classifieds. Display ads. Advertorials.<\/p>\n
Companies like RCS have been there from the very beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to work hard,\u201d says Steve. \u201cI had to learn about selling. I don\u2019t really like it. I prefer reporting! But when you\u2019ve got to run a business, you have to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then the readers came. Steve said the job ads just kept falling from the sky.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause, all around Australia, people could just read it in real time, not wait for two or three weeks for something to be mailed.\u201d<\/p>\n
He ended up charging for job ads. There was enough money to pay for it and make some money as well.<\/p>\n
What does Steve consider the biggest news story in Radioinfo\u2019s 30 years?<\/p>\n
We\u2019re living through it now.<\/p>\n
You guessed it: the collapse of the Kyle & Jackie O Show.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when you\u2019ve lived through the 30 years, you see the significance of it,\u201d Steve adds. \u201cSo, yes, this is the biggest story, but what was it \u2013 more than a decade ago \u2013 the biggest story was also Kyle and Jackie O leaving 2DayFM to go to KIIS. Then the big stories before that were other personalities leaving, like John Laws leaving one station and taking his audience with him and Alan Jones doing the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a story about when personalities get bigger than the station brand.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the one that got away?<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn Cleese was very rude when he was at the ACRAs and he declined to do a full interview,\u201d Steve recalls.<\/p>\n
He did offer a couple of words \u2013 (think \u2018bugger off.\u2019)<\/p>\n
Steve has worked all over the world, but says at the end of the day, \u201cIt\u2019s the people in this business that really matter to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the connection, big or small, with everybody who I\u2019ve written about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Steve Ahern first pondered the idea of publishing a radio industry newsletter, he visualised it as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,262522,262523,105],"class_list":["post-528146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-radioinfo","tag-steve-ahern","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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