Karyn Hay

Karyn Hay
Karyn Hay, Wellington, April 2017
Born	Auckland
Occupation	Author/Broadcaster
Nationality	New Zealander

Karyn Hay (born 1959, Auckland) is a New Zealand author and broadcaster. She came to fame as the presenter of 1980s music TV show Radio with Pictures before going on to an extensive career in television and radio.

Hay grew up in the Thames Valley dairy factory town of Waitoa, near Te Aroha. She recalls it as “heartland New Zealand... There was this yearning all the time to break out of that." She has only dim recollections of the 60s music TV shows. She found her escape in the printed word, "... reading William Burroughs, Hermann Hesse, Jean-Paul Sartre… Coming from a town like Waitoa, that kind of literature was more expansive than any kind of drug.”

Inspired by "the thought of arguing for a living”, Hay initially applied for law school but became a cadet with Radio New Zealand instead, beginning work at 1ZH in Hamilton as a copywriter. She worked as a copywriter at Radio Hauraki, and was the radio station's first female DJ.

Her television career began in 1981 when she wrote to Television New Zealand suggesting they might like a new presenter for alternative music show Radio with Pictures. Producer Peter Blake thought “she was right for the times...after the whole punk new wave thing, the music was changing, and the programme with it."

It was too much change for some of the audience. She had a New Zealand accent in an era when BBC style received pronunciation was compulsory for New Zealand television presenters, and they were required to attend elocution lessons. She either refused to attend, or was let off. Hay was the first New Zealand television presenter to speak with a New Zealand accent. Journalist Veronica Schmidt recalled that “although the BBC plum was no longer stuffed in every announcer’s mouth, appearing with an entirely raw Kiwi accent was still unheard of”. Listener writer Diana Wichtel remembered her unreconstructed Kiwi vowels as "depending on your point of view, the end of civilization as we knew it or a breath of indigenous fresh air". For her part, Hay was unrepentant, telling the New Zealand Listener “I’m a New Zealander. I’m not ashamed of my New Zealand accent.”.