(Originally published in FMR’s Opus magazine, April 2024).
A few years ago I retired as an airline captain, and now and again some groups of us still get together and reminisce about those days with “and there I was, inverted, running out of airspeed, altitude and ideas” stories.
Every generation views the past with a yearning for simpler times, when things – they believe – were somehow better and easier. I find myself in the throes of nostalgia every now and then, and I’ve come to realise that things haven’t (yet) changed fundamentally, it’s me that’s changed. The patina of youth makes the past sparkle, effectively hiding the flaws and blemishes. Things WERE better in my youth, mainly because I was young…
Then I am reminded of the youngsters, who would sit in my flight training classes with bright-eyed expectation – and I could see the younger me in their unbridled enthusiasm. They were going to make the same mistakes I had made, they were going to learn the hard life-lessons and hopefully experience the buckets of luck I managed not to empty during my career. (The story goes that you start your aviation career with a bucket in each hand. One filled with luck, and one empty of experience – the trick is to have enough in the experience bucket, when the other bucket runs out of luck).
Were things really better before?
I was reminded of this fallacy recently, when I listened just the other day to some old-school recordings with the voices of inter alia David Davies, Evelyn Martin and Clackie MacKay. While we always maintain that there is nothing new in radio – had radio stayed with the formats of years gone by, it would have died a slow death by now. That is in fact the problem with nostalgia radio, it dies with its audience – and its presenters.
That’s why we’re so encouraged by the growing younger audience to FMR, reflected in the BRC RAMS figures (which advertising agencies solely rely on). For the first time FMR now shows an audience between 15 and 24 years old, and a growing segment of 25 to 34 years old.
But what’s more encouraging is the young and eager brigade of FMR presenters, and our production staff.
Just look around our offices and studios: There is Mawande Lobi working with Andrew Williams, here’s Shireen Fisher, Anathi Godlo, and Siphiwo Deke talking jazz with Melissa Stephens. Here is Otto van der Walt sorting out RCS programming, explaining things to John Woodland and Kyle Paulssen, with Elizma Badenhorst looking on.
And don’t forget our older brigade – the ones with the full experience buckets, but still sounding young and working with high energy: What better examples than Mike Mills and Rodney Trudgeon?
Speaking of the young brigade, on the 1st of March, 2004, a very young man walked into FMR and started work, not quite knowing what it was all about. Now, 20 years later, he is the programme manager – a position he holds with great aplomb. Congratulations Wesley Lewies! Thank you for your passion for, and dedication to Fine Music Radio – long may it continue.
With our young, and our young at heart FMR team, we’re set for a successful future.
Now we just need to turn the SA economy around and get businesses to plough some money into our station, because our bucket of luck is precipitously low at the moment – and all the youthful enthusiasm and buckets of experience could well prove to be not enough.
Hangar Talk with Eon 