“I never realised I’d be at the one place for so long,” Craig “Huggy” Huggins told Mediaweek on the eve of his 30th anniversary at a single radio station. He joined what was KZFM on May 6, 1991 and he’s still there.
While Huggy today celebrates 30 years with the one station – now Gold 104.3 – he is also remembering his start in radio 40 years ago. He started at Melbourne’s 3XY when it was Melbourne’s #1 station and now four decades later he is #1 in his morning timeslot at Melbourne’s #1 FM station.
When you can hear Huggy
Huggy hosts Melbourne’s #1 FM morning show – 9am to midday – five days a week. But wait, there’s more. He hosts every second Saturday morning on Gold. There’s more. “I have also been doing Cruise 1323 for about 15 years,” said Huggy. The high-rating Adelaide AM music station features Melbourne’s finest for three hours on weekday afternoons.
Huggy on radio ratings
While Huggy is a solid ratings winner in his FM timeslot, there is not as much media focus on timeslot champs these days apart from breakfast and FM drive.
Huggy agreed with Mediaweek, but explained: “That may be true externally, but internally there is plenty of interest. I’m sure the sales guys use it as a tool. Across the day, Gold performs very well. I have been #1 for the last 10 surveys, and over the past five years I have been thereabouts, either #1 or #2.
“The breakfast show is a station’s launchpad and it should get the acknowledgement. I don’t want the glory, I just want the station to be a success.”
From a turntable to a keyboard
Huggy: “When I first started at 3XY we were playing records and cartridges. The change to computers during my career was a slow burn. I am someone who embraces technical changes. These days I don’t have to worry about organising 100 different cartridges for the commercials and loading them into machines. I have time to think about the craft and what I am going to say. It allows me to be more mentally adept and perhaps a little more adventurous on air.”
He had his share of tech mishaps along the way. “I remember knocking over a cup of coffee one day and the Technics turntable started to play backwards in the middle of a song.”
Huggy on stage at AAMI Park Melbourne. The gig of his life happened in January 2019 when he supported legendary singer, songwriter Phil Collins
Relationship with the listeners
For a music presenter, how does Huggy juggle the demands of the job – keeping his breaks short to not interrupt the music, but to also be able to engage with the audience?
“That is one of the tricks to being a good music jock. Being able to get across a message with brevity. The old cliché that ‘less is more’.
“I am just a married bloke with two kids living in suburban Melbourne, my best friends aren’t in the media and I’m on the committee of the local footy club. You could say I am very grounded. I live the sort of life that our listeners live.
“My job playing music is everyone else’s leisure activity.”
Huggy likes the Gold music so much that he often cranks the monitors to 11, plays the air guitar and drums, and sings along with his favourite songs. “I also tend to stamp my foot so everybody in the building knows when I like a song.”
And about that brevity. “I am good at self-editing. I don’t write scripts, but I write points and think about them. I am also aware that people listen to us for great music and I am just the voice between the songs. To have me waffling on, even if it’s good waffle, will detract from the songs.”
Colleagues that made an impact
When he started in radio, Huggy was a big fan of Greg Evans and was thrilled to be able to work alongside him.
“The guy who hired me at 3XY was Greg Smith and we still chat with each other every now and then. I was the first kid [aged 16] that he hired in radio. He made a big impact on me.
“When I first arrived at Gold it was still called KZFM. We had a new PD called Peter Sinclair and he changed the station to Gold 104. We were initially playing music for 18-25s on weekdays, and then playing Good Time Oldies on weekends.
“We had a jock’s meeting with all the announcers and Sinclair came in and explained he was changing the format. ‘If you play your cards right you could be here for a long, long time,’ he said.
“I certainly must have played my cards right to still be here.”
The Christian O’Connell experiment
Huggy has seen more than a few breakfast shows over 30 years at the station. Perhaps the biggest roll of the dice from management over the years was bringing in an unknown from out of the country for Gold breakfast two years ago.
“There was quite some time before staff found out who was coming. When they first mentioned Christian I didn’t know who he was. Some of the other guys here had heard him listening to his UK station.
“A week or two after we were told about the appointment I looked him up and wrote to Christian. I said I was looking forward to his arrival.
“We did wonder if this was going to work and lots of people were asking why we were putting on an English announcer. But he’s just been fantastic and he’s a good bloke. He’s completely integrated into the city and the people of Melbourne appreciate that.”
What life might have been like
Huggy was asked what life might have been like if he hadn’t won a competition to do some work with 3XY, later being offered a job on air.
“I had done work experience at 3AK and Channel Nine. When I was in the radio station Ward Everaardt was on air and announced there had been a crash on the Westgate Bridge. It made such an impression on me him being able to share that news with the audience. From then on I wanted to do the radio thing.
“I was also a pretty good footballer. Maybe about now I would have been a retired AFL player also with a radio career!” [Laughs]
Huggy trained with Carlton Under 19s for a time and he also played for the Victorian youth team. He was playing in the VFA for Coburg as a young recruit before radio came along. “Back then I was actually making more money playing football than I was in radio.”