My New Favorite Station: New Zealand’s “The Beach”

The joy of all these years of radio fandom has been stumbling across a station I love, especially a new station in a favorite category. It could be a previously (or recently) unheard CHR that is aggressive on new music. It might be the type of wider Classic Hits station that I’ve dubbed “Oldies XL.” Sometimes it’s a particularly broad yesterday-and-today AC—the one that’s a mile wide and definitely more than an inch deep. “Music you don’t hear everywhere” is the common denominator.

I’ve come across that wide AC station in the U.S., particularly KRXY (94.5 Roxy) Olympia, Wash. More often, that station is somewhere else in the world. It’s often in a smaller market where there’s not just an opportunity but an imperative to be broader and/or deeper. It might be “playing the hits” as locals know them, but it’s another country’s hits, so it still sounds exotic to me.

I like to think I offer Ross on Radio readers a broad, forward-looking take on our business, not just radio tourism and “oh wow” oldies. But if that’s what you’re looking for, you can’t get much more exotic than New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast, a resort area 50 miles north of Wellington, a favorite locale of director Peter Jackson, and home of my current favorite radio station, independently owned’ Beach FM 106.3. 

I came across Beach FM at random on Rova, the station aggregator app of NZ radio group Radioworks, four days ago. They promise and live up to “a bigger and better variety of hits” that pretty much span all of contemporary music. I’ve heard “Jailhouse Rock.” I’ve heard “Who’s In Your Head” by the Jonas Brothers. I’ve heard “Little Green Bag” into “Wrecking Ball” and Midge Ure into the Monkees. In Beach FM’s musical variety are echoes of BBC Radio 2, particularly pre-modernization. 

Part of the appeal is “sense of place.” Beach FM has “live and local”-type liners, but they really don’t need to. After a few days of listening, I know the China Beach restaurant is looking for a functions manager with knowledge of karaoke equipment. I know that there’s been flooding and road closures in recent days. Thanks to an interview with a local real estate manager, I know that are fewer available properties than ever—24 a year ago, 14 now. Yesterday, middayer Catherine Scullin issued a missing person report.

(Update: While the Beach sounds like the sort of station that has been in the market a long time, it’s actually less than a year old. Rob Walker, the Beach’s owner/morning man, was originally brought in to consult the then-CHR station and ended up buying it instead, as well as building a new studio and installing a new transmitter. In doing so, he’s created something rarely seen these days, a new full-service radio station.)

Here’s the Beach in overnights local time. Mornings seem to be slightly mellower, but the broad variety and relative emphasis on tempo has been a constant whenever I’ve listened.

• Peter Gabriel, “Red Rain”
• Sam Brown, “Stop”
• Everly Brothers, “Cathy’s Clown”
• David Guetta f/Kelly Rowland, “When Love Takes Over”
• Proclaimers, “I’m On My Way”
• Crowded House, “Distant Sun”
• Leo Sayer, “How Much Love”
• Go West, “I Want to Hear It from You”
• Ed Sheeran, “Overpass Graffiti”
• Rod Stewart, “The First Cut is the Deepest”
• Altered Images, “Don’t Talk to Me About Love”
• Yvonne Elliman, “If I Can’t Have You”
• Gregory Abbott, “Shake You Down”
• Lenny Kravitz, “American Woman”

Here’s the station in late middays:

• Annie Lennox, “Walking on Broken Glass”
• Jim Croce, “Bad Bad Leroy Brown”
• Ed Sheeran, “The ‘A’ Team”
• Clash, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”
• John Mellencamp, “Pop Singer”
• Fleetwood Mac, “You Make Loving Fun”
• Bryan Adams, “So Happy It Hurts” (his most recent single)
• Elvis Presley, “Hound Dog”
• Elton John, “Daniel”
• Rod Stewart, “You’re In My Heart (The Final Acclaim)”
• Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson, “Say Say Say”
• Anna Nalick, “2 AM (Breathe)”
• Abba, “Knowing Me Knowing You”
• Backstreet Boys, “As Long As You Love Me”
• Charlie Puth, “Marvin Gaye”