Angela Catterns: “I was told ‘We think you’re too intelligent for our radio audience'”

“It’s just like slipping on an old pair of socks.”

Angela Catterns is referring to her recent Breakfast stint on ABC Radio Sydney, filling in whilst regular host Craig Reucassel was away on holidays.

While Catterns loved being back on air, the 4am starts were hard yards. She missed her sleep-ins.

Catterns shares her incredible radio journey on the latest episode of the Fourth Estate podcast.

In this interview, she reveals she always had a fascination with the medium.

“I used to have a little transistor radio, and I would go to sleep with it on the pillow at night.”

A self-confessed teenage rebel, Catterns says “The older I got, the more rebellious I became.”

Catterns first worked in advertising in Sydney, then dropped out and moved up to Lismore on the north coast of New South Wales.

After doing various jobs from fruit picking to waitressing, she knocked on the door of local radio station 2LM and landed a casual job as a copywriter.

“The first time I ended up on air was reading my own ads. I remember an ad for a pig sale at the local market.”

After moving on to work in regional television, one day Catterns answered a newspaper advertisement for a job on a new children’s TV show.

That show was Simon Townsend’s Wonder World, and Catterns would become one of the original four reporters, alongside Jonathon Coleman, Adam Bowen and Sandy Mauger.

In the mid eighties, another job ad in the newspaper would grab Catterns’ attention: Sydney youth radio station triple j was on the hunt for a producer.

She applied for the job and got it.

At the time, triple j was located on William Street in the heart of Kings Cross.

“It was a wild and crazy place,” Catterns remembers. “It was a little bit co-op, the way it was run. There were these people on air who were very idiosyncratic, but it was exciting and fabulous, and the place to be.”

And sometimes it wasn’t for the faint hearted. One morning Catterns rocked up for work at 4am on a Saturday and saw a chalk outline of a body on the footpath outside.

Catterns’ on-air career began when then-Saturday Breakfast host Stuart Matchett broke his ankle.

“He’d been in Canberra and literally couldn’t drive back.”

Catterns was asked if she’d be up for presenting the show. She decided to give it a crack.

“I got in really early. Another lovely producer showed me how to operate the studio, which was then two turntables and a microphone. And it worked. It was actually seamless the first time.”

“This is the golden rule of radio: you do something for the first time, it’s perfect. The second time, everything that can go wrong DOES go wrong.”

Eventually she was offered the weekend Breakfast show. It was a mind-blowing time, playing ‘outlawed’ songs and interviewing artists from Joan Armatrading to Michael Hutchence.

Then along came 2SM, which had just gone stereo.

“They wanted to drive a wedge between us and Triple M, which was then the most successful commercial station,” says Catterns.

And triple j staff were in their sights.

“They came and said ‘We’ve got this fantastic radio station. We’d like you to all come and work there.”

Catterns came on board says it was an interesting experiment.

“They were nervous about having us on air, and trying this format on a commercial station.”

Catterns says she was given her marching orders after a year and a half.

“I remember being told ‘Women don’t like listening to other women on the radio, and we think you’re too intelligent for our audience.’”

Then came another appealing job ad in the paper (well, radio magazine R and R, to be exact). Next thing she knew, Catterns was on the other side of the world – in the United States – doing mid-dawns on WKYS.

“I loved it,” she says. “I was the only white person in that station, so I felt was it was like to be in a minority.”

By 1990, she had returned to triple j, but plenty had changed since her last stint there. The station had moved to ABC headquarters in Ultimo. It had gone from being Sydney centric to national.

Catterns was installed as Mornings presenter. It was a dream radio line up, with Helen Razer and Mikey Robins on Breakfast, Andy Glitre hosting Groove Train, Ian Rogerson and Debbie Spillane on Drive and Michael Tunn doing a show called Request Fest.

Catterns reveals she and Glitre had a bit of a ritual. “We used to have a spliff in the studio on handover. Unheard of now.”

Later on, Catterns became a mum. She started to feel a bit old at triple j. The ‘grown up’ ABC beckoned.

“I felt going to the ABC was a natural progression.”

Catterns would go on to host ABC Breakfast in Sydney, replacing Philip Clark, who’d moved across to host 2GB Breakfast.

“It was a very big gig and very challenging.”

“Management decided that they were going to put a kind of heavyweight journalist in with me a couple of times during the show. They would come in from the newsroom and bring the kind of gravitas and serious kind of journalism, I guess, to the show. I felt uncomfortable with that.”

At that time, ABC had hired legendary consultant Valerie Geller.

Catterns says Geller listened to 30 seconds of her show and said “Angela, you sound like you’re in radio jail.”

That was exactly how Catterns felt. So the ABC let her do it her way, and, in 2003, the show went to number 1.

Catterns says the station manager came downstairs with a cheap bottle of warm champagne.

Alan Jones – who had won the preceding 99 surveys – rang Catterns and offered his congratulations.

After 4 years, Catterns parted ways with the ABC to take up a new challenge. A new FM station was starting up in Sydney and had offered her a job.

That job was breakfast on Vega FM. It didn’t work out.

“The ratings weren’t there at the very beginning,” says Catterns. “I ended up with about four other people on the Breakfast show with me. I could hardly get a word in. It was uncomfortable. I didn’t like it. It started to feel wrong.”

After two years at Vega, she resigned.

“The ABC, I think, resented me for a long time for leaving. It took a lot of time to mend all that.”

A treasured gift Catterns did take away from the Vega experience was her enduring friendship with fellow broadcaster Wendy Harmer.

They partnered up and did Summer Breakfast show on ABC called ‘Early Girlies’ and were trailblazers in the world of podcasting when the medium was still in its infancy.

Today, she’s been happily hosting Saturday Breakfast on ABC North Coast for the past four years.

What the job has largely taught her is how to be a good listener.

“That’s what I get paid to do. To listen.”

“It’s been an enriching and rewarding experience.”

Craig Reucassel has now returned to the ABC Radio Sydney breakfast shift.

*Photo credit: Angela Catterns Home Page