Battleground Debate

Me versus Matt Heath and the fight for afternoon radio supremacy

This week Matt Heath and I - friends and newly bitter radio rivals - came together on a Google Doc to discuss media, life and self-glorification via another. The results are shared here, simultaneously on our substacks. The text discussion is also attached as an audio play, performed by us.

JESSE

Hey man, congratulations again on the new gig. Apologies for munching your mana regarding the announcement.

Sorry also I haven’t listened yet, it’s tricky given I’m hosting a show on RNZ at the exact same time as your ZB afternoon slot. 

MATT

Really? That hurts. I have listened to you heaps. I even changed my teeth brushing habits because one of your guests told me to. I’ll send you the podcasts of the last three weeks of our show. A light 30 or 40 hours of listening time and you’ll be caught right up. 

JESSE

Much appreciated! How is it all going? I hope you’re getting a good mix of banter and thoughtful discussion. Also, did you know there’s a person standing next to you on your marketing material? 

MATT

The guy in the photo is my co-host. He’s a top bloke. Talented broadcaster. Lucky to have him. He’s called Tyler or Tayler or something. 

Can I take this opportunity, before I answer any more of your questions, to apologise for keeping you in the dark about this move to ZB thing? That night we spent at the Black Barn Retreat Hawke Bay was special to me. The gig we did together was a huge sold-out success. Everyone had a great time. I sold 40 books. We were drinking wine, laughing, and learning from each other. I was complimenting your performance. You were great, btw. But the whole time, in the back of my mind, I had this dark secret. That very morning before you arrived, while eating a delicious free lunch at the Black Barn Bistro the venue of the gig you had organised for both of us, I had agreed to the new radio show on the phone. A show going head to head with you on a competing station. I was NDA’d up the wazoo, but one more bottle of red, and I would have told you everything. It was close.

JESSE

And to think I made you a full cooked breakfast the next morning! I hope that locally-sourced, free-range bacon was soured by the acrid taste of deception and betrayal. 

Nah I was stoked when I heard the news, everyone was. Even my 13yo daughter. I came home and said to my wife “guess what? Matt Heath is moving to ZB to do afternoons!”

My daughter said “Matt Heath, is that the one from The Traitors?”

I said “Yeah that’s him!”

She said “He was the funny one right?”

I said “ummm, no. You’re thinking of someone else”.

MATT

Yeah, she was def thinking of Brooke Howard-Smith.

But I still appreciate the support. The Mana Munch is a key tool in the media personality arsenal. I appreciated being munched by you. The Mana Munch for those who don’t know is the act of associating yourself on social media with someone who currently has some currency. Getting a selfie with a gold medal winner and posting it is the purest form of Mana munching. It’s the art of stealing ‘play’ for yourself on the back of a flasher person’s success. It takes minimal personal effort but creates a large, if slightly humiliating buzz for a muncher.

JESSE

Doesn’t need to be a big celebrity either. Look at the kudos that rolled in for the Instagram post I did on my centenarian grandfather. I mean he served in the Second World War; what did I do to earn those Likes?

MATT

Heartwarming munch! Also congrats on the genes. You can also Munch years later. If a band or actor comes to town, you post a picture with them from their last visit. In this way, you can munch a famous person’s mana multiple times. Another form of this kind of munching is a two-way substack conversation. I am munching you as we speak. 

JESSE

And though I fear we may have already tested our audience’s tolerance for two Pākehā men freestyling with te eo, I should also mention an additional category: the mata munch. This is when a celebrity dies and you immediately post a picture of yourself with that celebrity in order to soak up a bit of the love and goodwill the internet is showing towards them (deathversaries give you an annual bite at it).

Speaking of which, how good was your send off on Hauraki? It was close as I think you could have come to attending your own funeral. People not only said nice things about you, they shared devastatingly accurate analyses of what makes you a great broadcaster and a great human being. At your actual funeral, the celebrant should just take along a UE Boom and play that podcast.

Any regrets about leaving yet? Haven’t you heard the old showbiz adage “never quit a hit”?

Matt

I was very sad to leave. The Matt and Jerry Show and Hauraki as a whole are family. The effort and thought that went into my departure was so very touching. If the final show was like being at my funeral, the day afterwards was like attending my wake awake. So many speeches roasting me.  It’s nice to know after 14  years at a brand, you aren’t hated by your co-workers. As for the final episode, when Jeremy played audio he had organised of my kids talking about me, I pissed my face hard. He is a lovely gentleman that Wells. Another person you have gone head to head with media wise. I hope our rivalry will last seven years. Great stint. 

So what's the secret to surviving in the afternoon slot on radio? You get to sleep in, which is nice, but finding content that late in the day when everything has already been picked over is something I am not used to. It’s like being the 2nd to last seagull at the fish and chips left on a picnic table. 

JESSE

Yeah, it’s an issue for sure! We take the view that by 1pm people are a bit sick of hard news anyway. So we let Midday Report interview the minister about the thing, and instead put our efforts into finding the farmer in Southland who’s invented a new bale wrap. 

Afternoons is a double-edged sword. On the one hand if ratings go down nobody blames you because listenership is all driven out of breakfast; on the other you can be putting on the best show that’s ever been created and it’ll barely move the needle. 

Plus radio listening at that time of the day is (I think) more about somebody’s lifestyle than tuning around the dial. For a listener deciding what to do with themselves at 2pm on a Tuesday my major competition isn’t you, it’s a nap.

I hope you enjoy the gig! As you know, radio exposes your personality in a way TV doesn’t. You have to find a sustainable version of yourself to share for 3-4 hours each day, or risk having it all fall apart on you. In the early days of RNZ I used to struggle to work out how to be the same person interviewing the champion duck caller as I was talking to the woman sharing the story of her stillbirth. I came to the conclusion that I can’t be Comedy Jesse then do a handbrake turn into Sombre Jesse - I’ve had to find (what I hope is) a generous, curious version of myself that will serve me in any situation 

Covering the mosque attacks tested this theory. 

By the way I make it sound like I did a workshop to design this persona. In fact I think it probably emerged by necessity after the first couple of years of interviews.

MATT

Yeah I get you. It's getting hard to tell where what I am ends and what they're making me begins.

JESSE

You’ve done ten thousand hours of honing Radio Matt on Hauraki. Do you feel like you’re starting again on ZB or bringing all of that with you?

MATT

The main problem is I have to wade through the filth I have trained myself to spew on rock radio to get to a reasonable response for a caller. We are talking berms and whether city councils should mow them or not and I can’t help but refer to them as ‘nature strips’ and giggle because it invokes a trimmed downstairs. Juvenile. 

JESSE

I know what you mean about recalibrating. I came from More FM and when I joined RNZ it took a while to stop myself going for the gag. Afternoons used to have a feature called Greatest Song in the World where each day one listener would call up tell me why a certain song was the best ever, then we’d play it. My first shift I had some old timer lined up to talk about Country Roads and when I opened up the mic I said “coming up on the show we have some great music, and some John Denver”. He was just sitting there on hold listening to it, and waiting for his big moment on air. I’ve felt bad about that ever since. It’s not that what I said was offensive, more that it showed a lot of disrespect for something this guy loved. I think that’s what “appropriate” material for radio comes down to - not that any joke or judgment is objectively bad taste, but by indulging in it you are acting like your audience’s passions and values don’t matter.

MATT

Yes. This is true. I never thought of that. I was told the other day by management that in this gig everything doesn’t need to build up to a punchline. I told him to get fucked. Nah.. just jokes. I told him ‘thanks I appreciate feedback from management’. Just jokes. I told him to get fucked.

JESSE

Hahahahaha

MATT

Also I am leaving my ZB studio twice a show to visit the bathroom. It’s a long walk. If I am going to survive in this game I am going to need to work on my pelvic floor. How’s yours going?

JESSE

Not something I’ve noticed but thanks for putting the possible need to wee in my head. I overheard you doing group pelvic floor exercises on Hauraki a few times and I thought: what a perfect, funny, male-focused-but-not-toxic feature to include on a rock radio show. I couldn’t help but Kegel along with you.

By the way what is the tolerable word count for this substack conversation? I like how at the end of your Hauraki daily podcast you’d be mid-conversation and then just go “all right, then” and that’d be the end of the podcast.

MATT

Yeah look we might be pushing the length people are willing to read. Shall we record this in audio form as well so people can listen? Read it out like a play?

JESSE

Sure sounds good. Oh God I laughed so much when you talked about doing that with Jeremy in the early days, when you’d prep a script for nine hours and then turn up at 6am and read it out like a play hahahahaha

MATT

Yeah we were terrified amateurs back then. Now we are pros ruling the afternoon airwaves.  Anyway, you seem busy I’ll let you go. 

The good buddies death battle for weekdays one to four pm radio begins…. NOW!

JESSE

In the words of Hauraki Podcast Matt: “All right, then”.

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Thanks for reading through this unusual episode. IMO Matt Heath is one of New Zealand’s great minds, and I look forward to his substack every week. You should sign up too!