Saturday Susie: Kim Hill’s RNZ replacement confirmed
From the archives: Broadcaster Susie Ferguson is the new host of RNZ’s “well-loved” Saturday Morning show, following Kim Hill’s departure in November. Ferguson is a familiar voice to RNZ listeners having presented Morning Report for eight years. More recently, she has worked as a senior journalist and presenter, on special projects and presenting programmes across RNZ, including filling in on Saturday Morning. In 2022, Ferguson talked to Michele Hewitson about stepping back from Morning Report, stress, menopause and being stern on politicians. That interview is revisited here.
Sometimes, in a taxi, say, people will say to Susie Ferguson after hearing her voice: “Do I know you from somewhere?” Or, “Have we met before?”
She is on the other end of the phone from Wellington. I know her, or think I do, from somewhere. We have, after all, met before, most mornings, via the wireless, where she has been for eight-and-a-half years, the calm, crisp, Scottish-accented co-host on RNZ National’s Morning Report.
The relationships we have with those voices on the wireless are weird, really. We do know what the face behind the voice looks like these days, but they are, as she says, different from the relationships we have, or think we have, with the faces on the telly.
A voice on the radio is disembodied, as is one on the phone. It’s funny, I say, hearing her off the radio. That she sounds, surprise, just like her. “People tell me that,” she says. Her wit is as crisp as her radio persona.
Our interview did not get off to the most auspicious of starts. This was entirely my fault. I had pushed some muting button on my phone, so I couldn’t hear her.
“Hello. Hello. Hello,” I shouted.
I un-pushed the button. “Can you hear me?”
She said, calmly, “I can.”
This was akin to a parody of a sober and sensible RNZ interview gone awry. Her interviews seldom go awry. I was flapped. She wasn’t.