I've written previously about the demise of the Mount's Kiss-FM. But what was the full story? This week we get the real oil directly from Max Christoffersen, who founded Contact 89FM at Waikato University in 1986.

He returned to the Bay in 2008 after launching Hamilton's first NZQA approved school of radio. This is how it all went down, in his own words:

The advent of ‘new media' had me thinking. Was it possible to launch a radio station at Mount Maunganui that was essentially Contact 89FM updated? Student radio with an alternative bent had never really been established in the Bay. But if anyone knew that style of broadcasting, it was me. I'd had 25 years to think about it.

So on February 12, 2009, I did it once again. I turned on an FM transmitter for the third time and sat back and listened to a radio station that was born from little else but the drive to share music and a love of the coast. Kiss-FM was born.

Sure it was a low power station, with only enough legal power to cover the Mount. But I knew the future for commercial radio was about to hit a wall. Everyone in the business knew it. Radio was dying. And there was no way the commercial radio license fees that were due by April 2011 could be paid by Australian company Ironbridge Capital to keep their unsustainable Kiwi radio stations afloat.

Something had to give. It could mean a radical resizing of the radio sector which had to mean spare frequencies and the right to broadcast with enough power to reach music lovers in Tauranga, Papamoa and Mount Maunganui. And there was also a non-commercial broadcast license, offered here in 2008 and then withdrawn at the last minute. Two aces up my sleeve.

It was worth a shot.

Fast forward to October 2011. After almost three years Kiss-FM had the highest rating of any of the radio stations I had launched in the two decades previously. It enjoyed growing media support and the local music community valued the airtime for their music. More than 4000 online requests for the Music-on-Demand service were being received each month; the station had achieved more than I thought possible.

Then I turned it off. It was October 25 10.30am. What had gone wrong?

‘Government' is the one word answer.

While posturing as a free market operator PM John Key had decided to pay the FM radio license fees for Australian-owned radio in New Zealand: The Rock, More FM and The Breeze – thereby protecting the stations from ‘market forces'. Against the advice of Treasury, the Government had become a radio bank.

The hypocrisy of the decision is obvious. Australian-owned local radio stations have a $43m cash loan from you and me, the taxpayer, and five years to pay it off. In paying their broadcast fees for them, Government ignored their own free-market ethos, making up the rules as they went along. When it's free-market the user pays; when it doesn't suit to stick to the script, we pay.

Still, there was that ‘non-commercial license' waiting in the wings for Bay broadcasters.

I had to take the second and final shot at making a musical contribution to my community.

Two months after making the application, the answer came back on October 25.

Kiss-FM had been declined with no reasons given by The Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

Within minutes of getting the Ministry's decision Kiss-FM was off-air; the Mount's local radio story was over.

Government had locked up the frequencies and paid for them with taxpayer's money while the Ministry charged with encouraging culture and heritage and local identity had decided that silence on-air in the Bay was better than hearing Brilleaux, Hard To Handle, Grant Haua, Enercia, Hannah Fryett, Kokomo and a wealth of other world class Bay of Plenty musicians.

The 106.2 frequency along with six other frequencies today remain vacant, unallocated and silent.

All we need from our politicians is sound decision-making.
When it comes to broadcasting and the encouragement of our own space, our own place and our own identity in the Bay, government decision-making has been fueled with hypocrisy and petty bureaucracy.

Kiss-FM stood up for our place and for our voice. It fought the law – but the law won.