RAW AND UNFILTERED
Live radio isn’t for the faint of heart, as Hayley Bath so eloquently demonstrates through her most embarrassing yet hilarious moments at work.
Most people will, at some point in their career, make mistakes at work. I have the rare gift of having any mistakes I make happen in public, while broadcasting live on nationwide radio. It’s a great way to keep any fragile ego in check.
I’ve been the day-show radio announcer on The Hits for nearly nine years. I love radio, and I’m good at what I do, but I’ve still never met a sentence I can’t ruin with confidence.
Picture this: I have 10 seconds until the song finishes. I can see the countdown on one of four screens in front of me before I go live. The mic is ready, the red light is on. I go to speak and, mid-sentence, my mind goes blank. What was I going to talk about again? The dreaded brain freeze hits.
There’s no backspace in radio, no TV editing. It’s just me, a mic and the dawning realisation that I’ve made a mistake I now have to commit to publicly.
Over the years, I’ve mispronounced words I invented only seconds earlier. I’ve had callers go rogue live on air, ranting and swearing. One day, I was reading the weather when a spider crawled across my forehead. I had no choice but to scream, recover, then casually mention the incoming storm warnings. I still don’t have any idea how the spider got inside a double-walled, acoustic-lined studio.
I was humbled early in this line of work. As an intern on my first shift, I nervously came out of the song White Flag by Dido, stumbled over my words, and said it was sung by “Dildo”. I’d like to say the rest of the shift improved, but that same day I also managed to accidentally broadcast a Donald Trump speech over a Backstreet Boys song. I was sure my career would end as soon as it started.
Every workday, I sit in front of 184 radio buttons and audio controls (I counted them for the purpose of this article), not to mention all the screens in my studio. It’s multitasking at its best – technical pressure, talking, timing, reading, listening and reacting all at once.
When the mic turns on, it’s sink or swim. It’s what makes this job fun and terrifying all in the same breath. There are people in the radio industry who keep a dreaded folder of on-air mishaps made by announcers over the years. You don’t want to be the one whose audio is blasted out through the speakers at the end of the work party.
Sometimes, the chaos isn’t even contained to your own studio. We share a building with Newstalk ZB, and during a stint in temporary studios while new ones were being built, I clumsily knocked out what looked like some fairly critical wires. I held my breath, then relaxed when The Hits stayed on air. Crisis averted – or so I thought. Seconds later, a producer burst out of the studio next door, shouting, “WE’VE GONE OFF AIR! GET THE TECHS IN! ZB IS OFF AIR!” Three people sprinted past my window as I quietly sank out of sight behind my mic. Oops.
Radio’s addictive because it’s about real connection and what’s happening in the moment. There’s a certain intimacy to it, too. People listen in cars and kitchens, on night shifts, at workplaces; they invite you into their space every time they turn on the radio. This week, a caller told me I was the first person they’d spoken to out loud all week. They live alone, work from home, and mostly communicate through emails and texts. It’s not uncommon for a lot of people.
Radio is an unfiltered, real-time exchange between people, something carefully edited social media video reels can’t rival. The weird and wonderful texts and calls that come in daily create a sense of community you can’t fake, and in a world that often feels chaotic, I try to create a positive place people can come to for good music, connection, and a moment to breathe and have fun. It’s very hard to feel bad when music from S Club 7 and Coolio is pumping on a Friday.
Like I said, there’s no backspace in radio. When the mic turns on, anything can happen. It’s not about getting every word right – instead, it’s sometimes messy, unpredictable and completely human. That’s the magic of it.
Catch Hayley on The Hits 95FM, weekdays 9am till 3pm.