Smooth FM’s ‘quiet achiever’ Mike Perso reaches 40 year milestone
He’s a calm influence in a “sea of bells and whistles” and doesn’t treat his audience like “punchlines to a joke.” And after 40 years on air, Smooth FM star Mike Perso is still succeeding.
Confidential
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Smooth FM star Mike Perso will celebrate 40 years in radio this month as a calm influence in a “sea of bells and whistles” who never treated the audience like “punchlines to a joke.”
Perso’s career milestone has come during a year where he and Smooth co-host Jennifer Hansen enjoyed No. 1 ratings success in Melbourne’s ultra-competitive breakfast market.
“It sounds like a cliche but we’re very real,” Perso said. “We’re very much more interested in our audience as people — as them — and not just props.
“Sometimes, you hear audience members being used almost as props and punchlines to a joke.
But we’re very aware of why they come to Smooth … it’s different, they want to feel good, and they don’t want to be assailed by all the other stuff that goes on.”
He added: “There’s no huge demand to spill your guts about everything you’re thinking on-air.
It’s, ‘Hey we’ve done this, you might be interested in it,’ or ‘I had a funny experience the other night, here’s what happened.’ It’s about relating to people’s regular lives.
“I know it doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles attached to it, but it hasn’t, and that’s the point,” Person said. “In a sea of bells and whistles, in an absolute ocean of distraction and noise and happy-clapping, our thing is, ‘Welcome to the day, you’re gonna be all right, we’re gonna get you through it. We’ll have a laugh or two and play some great music.’”
Mike Perso got his broadcasting break at radio station 3NE in Wangaratta, Victoria, in December 1979.
At the time, he had a job making women’s shoes at Footrest Shoes in Preston.
“I started working there on a couple of machines, and worked in the storeroom for a while,” he said. “But I knew it wasn’t where I wanted to work for the next 30 or 40 years.”
He did the midnight to dawn shift in Wangaratta, before career moves all over country, working for Fox, Triple M, Star FM, TT-FM (now KIIS FM) and Nova.
Did he always have a voice for radio?
“My two brothers; one is a concreter, one is a truck driver — we’ve all got the same voice,” Perso said, laughing. “So, for me, it just kinda worked out.”
Perso worked the breakfast shift on Fox alongside Peter ‘Grubby’ Stubbs and Diane ‘Dee Dee’ Dunleavy. He said the pressure to deliver ratings was the same back then.
“You’re only there because you’re gonna get ratings, and if you don’t get ratings there’s no reason for you to be there, so you better deliver,” he said.
“It’s a lot of fun, but you’ve got to think about what you’re going to do, and how you’re going to do it differently to other people.
“You have to get an audience, please an audience and keep an audience, then the sale team has to convert it into cash. That’s the bottom line.”
When Smooth announced Perso’s 40 year milestone, there were no bells and whistles. The station called him “a quiet achiever.”
Perso says: “That’s true. I more than happy to be quiet achiever. I haven’t gone blazing out there. You’ve never seen a Mike and Jen billboard, you’ve never seen a Mike and Jen TV ad.
“We’ve built the success based on a long-term commitment to our audience, and the way we do the things we do.”
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Perso, who has three sons with partner Jac, said: “The key guiding principle, if I’ve got one, is, it’s good to be better, but it’s better to be different
“The me that’s on Smooth is the me that was on 13 other radio stations.
“The environment around me might change, but it’s still me hoping to have a good, friendly, honest, entertaining conversation with listeners.”