From The VBC to Salient FM to Podcasts

Words by Francesca Pietkiewicz (she/they)

For this week’s podcast page, I look back into our archives and explore the beginnings of not only Salient Podcasts but Salient F.M. 

Salient F.M. had its beginnings as the Victoria/Vic Broadcasting Club (VBC) in 2007. VBC was originally started to take the place of still-running Radio Active as a new campus-based uni radio. VBC remained until it was reclaimed to partner with Salient as Salient F.M. in 2015. This was the result of interest from the Salient editors at the time to join forces with VBC as well as an almost shut-down of the station between 2013-2014. 2014 VUWSA President Sonya Clark stepped in and VUWSA took control of the station—the reason we’re still here today. Salient F.M., under station managers Nav Nair and Jazz Kane, and Salient editor Kii Small (2018 Salient F.M. manager, Unpack podcast co-host and founder, and co-founder of podcast collective Coalesce), had its final year as a radio station in 2019.

From what I’ve heard, VBC/Salient F.M. had an intensely loyal cult following. It’s end was deeply mourned by many. But 2020 is where I come in. In 2020, I started working as the Salient Podcast producer alongside the podcast manager Matt Casey (2021 Salient editor and host of the late radio-show-turned-podcast Young Matt Show). The Salient Podcast was a weekly podcast we ran under Salient Podcasts which overviewed the Salient magazine that week. Matt did an amazing job of establishing Salient Podcasts in and amongst the beginning of the pandemic. I was extremely lucky to have him still on board as editor last year, as I swooped into the podcast manager role for the first time. 2021 was when we laid the foundations for what Salient Podcasts has become this year. My goal was to get us consistently into the magazine. We’ve done that, so I’m stoked. 

I learned something surreal this year that made this all feel like a big cyclical wonder. My journey with student media, radio, and journalism started back in 2014: my first year of high school. I became a student radio host, with a slot on Friday lunchtimes with my best friend. The majority of the time, we were too scared to speak, edging the mic fader up for a breath and a giggle before continuing to blast our favourite tunes across Wellington High School. Lots of early Childish Gambino and Channel Orange by Frank Ocean. This continued on into 2015—the year a new friend and I began hijacking the Te Herenga Waka campus to ‘study’ (like we had anything to revise, it was Year 10). It was the year I read my first Salient and pasted a centrefold on my wall for the first time. In 2018 I applied for a journalism internship at Wellington Access Radio. Now here’s the surreal thing: Kristen Paterson (previous station manager at Access Radio, now general manager at PBS radio in Melbourne, and my mentor, the person who helped launch me into my career in podcasting at seventeen) was one of the co-launchers of VBC back in 2007! I had no idea until this year, my second year as Salient Podcasts manager.