Also known as: Masskeradio, Radio Massey, 2XM
Frequency: 99.4FM
Coverage: Palmerston North / Manawatū
Location: Level 2, Student Services Building, Massey University, Palmerston North
Format: Student radio / Alternative; 45–50% NZ music
Founded: 1980 (commercial licence); on air from 1981
Active: 1981–present
Website: radiocontrol.org.nz
History
Radio Control 99.4FM is one of New Zealand’s oldest continuously operating student radio stations, tracing its roots to Massey University in Palmerston North in 1980. According to Massey University’s own institutional history, the station holds a singular distinction: it was the first commercial student-run radio station in New Zealand, having received its commercial broadcasting licence in 1980 — before bFM in Auckland had formalised its own commercial operation.
The station first went to air in 1981 under the name Masskeradio, broadcasting from a caravan on the Massey University campus. In those earliest days the setup was as improvised as student radio gets — egg cartons for soundproofing, minimal equipment, and an audience drawn mainly from the student population. But the ambition was there from the start, and the station quickly became part of campus life. A delegate from Radio Massey (as it had become known) attended the first New Zealand Student Radio Conference in Wellington in 1981 — an event that brought together the various campus stations then emerging around the country. An observer’s description of the Radio Massey contingent at that conference — they looked like Young Farmer Award contestants — has passed into student radio folklore.
Through the early 1980s the station operated as Radio Massey on an FM frequency at a time when most of New Zealand had not yet made the shift from AM. Quentin Bright, one of the station’s key figures of the period, made the switch to FM broadcasting in 1984, giving Radio Massey an edge over local commercial rivals including 2XS, the professional Palmerston North station that viewed the student operation with a mixture of regard and unease — recognising it as a talent pool while being unsettled to be beaten on the FM transition.
It was during this fertile period — the mid-1980s — that Radio Massey produced one of its most consequential alumni. Steven Joyce arrived at Massey University around 1982 as a zoology and economics student who had failed his vet entrance exam the previous year. He drifted into broadcasting, making the usual rookie mistakes on air — leaving the microphone on during ad breaks, the occasional on-air profanity — but learned fast. By 1984 he had been appointed news editor, then programme manager. Joyce demonstrated a notably commercial instinct: together with fellow presenter Peter Noldus he built a playlisting program on a Commodore 64 to manage song rotations, an early sign of the systematic thinking that would define his later career.
Joyce and a group of Radio Massey colleagues — Quentin Bright, Jeremy Corbett, Peter Noldus, and Darryl Reid — began meeting at Bright’s flat to plan something more ambitious than student radio. Their goal was a private commercial FM station in a provincial city that did not yet have one. New Plymouth was the obvious candidate: both Joyce and Bright had grown up in Taranaki, and the city lacked a private FM station. Joyce briefly returned to Radio Massey as station manager in 1985 while the group regrouped, before the five co-founders launched Energy FM full-time in New Plymouth on 93.2FM — having received a full licence from the Broadcasting Tribunal in June 1987 after a 15-month wait. The station commenced full-time broadcasts on 30 November 1987; the first song played on air was Wang Chung’s Let’s Go.
Over the following 17 years, Joyce and his partners built Energy FM into RadioWorks, eventually comprising 22 local radio stations and four national networks — including The Edge and The Rock — with 650 staff in 20 branches nationwide. RadioWorks was purchased by Canadian company CanWest in 2000. Joyce then entered politics: elected as a National Party list MP in 2008, he rose through ministerial portfolios in Transport, Communications, Economic Development, and Science and Innovation, before serving as Minister of Finance from December 2016 until October 2017. He resigned from Parliament in 2018 and in 2025 became chairman of NZ Media and Entertainment (NZME). The throughline from a student radio caravan in Palmerston North to the chairmanship of one of New Zealand’s largest media companies is a remarkable arc — and it all started at Radio Massey.
The station went through one further name change after the Radio Massey era, briefly operating as 2XM before settling on Radio Control around 1997. The name reflected a growing sense of the station’s own identity — independent, alternative, and unambiguously its own thing rather than simply an appendage of the university. The 99.4FM frequency it occupies today provides solid coverage across the Palmerston North city and the wider Manawatū region, with worldwide streaming available through its website.
Radio Control is 100% owned by Te Tira Ahu Pae (the Massey University Student Association) and operates from studios in the Student Services Building on the Manawatū campus. The station employs one full-time Station Manager alongside two part-time paid staff and relies on approximately 60 volunteers to deliver its programming schedule. Te Tira Ahu Pae also produces Massive Magazine, making it one of the few student associations in New Zealand still sustaining two active media outlets.
Programming runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with a philosophy firmly rooted in alternative music and local content. Radio Control plays 45–50% New Zealand music across its schedule — well above the 30% threshold required under NZ On Air’s platform funding agreements. Weekday daytime programming includes The Local Show (Monday mornings, dedicated to Palmerston North and Manawatū artists), The Kiwi Big Breakfast (Thursdays), and a NZ Top Ten Chart on Thursday evenings. Evenings and weekends open up to specialist shows covering every genre imaginable, hosted by the station’s volunteer presenter community.
NZ On Air has supported Radio Control as one of five student radio stations receiving platform funding across New Zealand — alongside 95bFM (Auckland), RadioActive 88.6FM (Wellington), RDU 98.5FM (Christchurch), and Radio One 91FM (Dunedin). The 2024/25 funding round awarded the Massey University Students Association up to $180,000 for Radio Control’s operations. This funding underpins the station’s alternative music content and its live sessions programme in particular.
The live sessions partnership with Creative Sounds — The Stomach, the council-funded rehearsal studio and performance venue at 84 Lombard Street in central Palmerston North, has been one of Radio Control’s most enduring collaborations. The Stomach has operated since 1988 as the incubator for generations of Palmerston North bands. Radio Control’s live-to-air sessions recorded there have captured acts across the full range of what the local scene produces — post-punk, indie rock, alternative, and experimental sounds. The partnership is well documented: video recordings of sessions at The Stomach broadcast and archived by Radio Control include live sets from bands such as Churlington and Rusty Frames, and the connection gives the station a direct pipeline to what is emerging from the local underground. The Stomach is also the primary venue for SwampFest, a festival celebrating Palmerston North alternative music, and Radio Control’s involvement in that ecosystem has cemented its role as the house station of what locals affectionately call Swampton.
In 2010 the station released Out of Control, a 25-track compilation celebrating 30 years of Radio Massey and documenting the range of artists who had passed through its orbit. The tracklist spanned decades of Palmerston North bands — from The Skeptics and Bing Turkby through to The Ashvins and Wholesale Drainage — giving the compilation an archaeological quality as a record of what the Manawatū underground had produced across three decades. Local institution Feast of Stevens also figured in the station’s early years, with their song Fuck Off Rugby Heads becoming — according to local legend — the most requested song ever played on Radio Control.
Radio Control is a member of the Student Radio Network of Aotearoa New Zealand (SRN), the organisation coordinating the country’s surviving student radio stations. In November 2025, Palmerston North hosted the Aotearoa Alternative Awards — presented by the SRN in association with NZ On Air — with Radio Control at the centre of the event: a celebration of emerging local musicians and the volunteer communities sustaining alternative radio around the country. The station streams worldwide at radiocontrol.org.nz and remains one of the last true student radio operations in New Zealand: campus-based, student-body owned, and genuinely independent in its programming decisions.