The future of radio is in good hands: Cam Hilder

Illawara’s i98FM Workdays announcer Cameron ‘Cam’ Hilder thought he knew what life as an announcer would be like before he got into the industry. 

Come in, spin a yarn, play some music – easy. 

“Obviously, I thought I was going to be the next Hamish and Andy. As everyone who gets into radio does,” Cam said.

“It is definitely different.”

Cam says it’s easy to think radio “is all fun and games” from the outside, but when you try your hand at announcing “you realise how much of a prepared art” it is.

“I think the reason that perception is the way it is, is because people have gotten so good at pretending like they don’t know what they’re doing,” Cam said.

“After a short time being in here [i98], I was like, alright, this isn’t just sort of rock up to work and talk about anything ’cause otherwise, anyone would be doing it. But I think when I first started I didn’t have the respect for radio that it deserved, and now once you get into it and you start realising how much work actually is required to do the job, you really appreciate what goes into it and you appreciate the people who dedicate themselves to it a lot more.”

Like Cam, before he put in the hard yards, many people hold similar misconceptions about life as a radio announcer, but Cam is changing that one video at a time.

Using Instagram, Cam started sharing insights into the actualities of a day in the life of an announcer to show people what it’s really like.

 

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“I get people with a lot of questions about what it was like to work in radio, and not that I got sick of people asking, but I was like, I feel like there has to be a way I can just sort of tell everyone what it’s like without, you know, having to answer the same questions every time, so I thought that was like a fun way of telling people what I actually do, and how radio actually works,” Cam said.

 

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“I guess I make the videos based on what people ask me about my job and something that people always ask me, I suppose is like, what a typical day looks like.”

“Like, what time do you get in? Who picks the music? How do you how do you know you’re going to talk about what? What time do you leave? Like, how much preparation do you do for this stuff?”

 

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After seeing what it really takes to be a radio announcer, Cam believes that the rise of social media will put the future of radio in good hands.

“I think now people who actually really like radio and respect the work that goes into making good radio, they will be the ones who stick around and get the jobs as opposed to some people who might just want to be on the radio because it might increase their public persona or something,” Cam said.

“I mean, there are other ways to do that now, so I think the future of radio is going to be people who love radio, which I think means radio is going to be in safe hands.”

“The people who like it are actually here.”

In the future, Cam wants to see how far he can take his career, so long as AI doesn’t develop fast enough to take his job.

“I was listening to a song this morning that was made by a computer, it’s The Weeknd featuring Drake and the sounds exactly the same [as the artists], so who knows how long before they’ve got AI radio announcers,” Cam said.

Cam can be heard on i98FM between 9am and 2pm on weekdays.