Mike Regal and his family hadn’t even finished unpacking the contents of their new Bevan Street home when they were evacuated in the middle of the night, as a fire on Mt Iron threatened to spread.

It was a literal warm welcome for the Regals, who’d only just moved to Wanaka to start a new life in quiet central Otago, away from the madness of Auckland, after becoming the new owners of Radio Wanaka.

The connection to the town had been there for many years. Wayne Johnson, who founded Radio Wanaka, gave Mike his first job in radio in Dunedin, when he worked for Radio Otago in the early 1980s.

Ed Taylor, a good friend of Mike’s, bought the Radio Wanaka in 2002 and always said to Mike that he’d sell it to him “one day”. That day eventually came in April 2011 when he rang him up and told him he wanted to sell it. 

“I was 52 and thought ‘if I don’t do it now, I’m never going to do it’,” Mike recalls.

He ditched his corporate job in the big city, packed up his life and moved to the bottom of Mt Iron to take over the community radio station.

“It was a steep learning curve,” he said. “In corporate, you have a specific role. Suddenly, you are doing everything.

“The biggest challenge was the technical side of things. I didn’t have Sean on the third floor anymore that I could ring to come and fix things.”

It took him a couple of years to stop waking up at three o’clock in the morning worrying about things. “One day I realised things weren’t all going to blow up on the same day and it can all be fixed.”

In Wanaka, he found a friendly and welcoming community that helped him feel settled from the start (fire scare aside).

After eight years steering the station, Mike prides himself in the fact that they never lost a client -  and some of them have even become good friends. He also takes pride in the low staff turnover as he tries to give people the space to enjoy the lifestyle Wanaka offers.

“I’m not a clock watcher. We come to Wanaka for a certain lifestyle,” he said. As long as the job is done, he’s a happy man. 

That lifestyle was exactly what enticed Mike to Wanaka. As he sits in his office in the Radio Wanaka building, in his plaid flannel shirt and Vans shoes, he’s a whole world away from his old corporate days in Auckland.

A passionate mountain biker and skier, he’s often off the airwaves and out on the trails enjoying the outdoors. 

“When you come here, you have to make sure you enjoy the things that Wanaka offers,” he said.

What Wanaka offers is also a sense of community like few other places still have. 

According to Mike, Radio Wanaka is one of about four independently-owned radio stations left in the country and, more than just being a profitable business, it also has the goal of serving the community.

“Local radio is about connecting with the community,” he said. “Bigger corporations present a homogenised, general programme, they talk about what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast, while we tell you whether the Crown Range is open or not. We talk about things that affect people in the community a lot more directly.”

For Mike, that’s the power of radio - the connection with the community - and that’s why community radio like Radio Wanaka has done so well even through all the changes in the media, with the digital revolution, including streaming and podcasts.

He’s optimistic about the future of radio and said the industry will go through further technology advancements in the next ten or 20 years, as it moves away from the reliance on terrestrial signals. 

“Right now we’ve still transmitters on Mt Maude and Hill End. But we also stream on the Wanaka App and iHeartRadio. I hop in my car and I stream Radio Wanaka from the Wanaka App. Often the streams are clear as a bell, the audio is actually better.”

“You’ve got to have a point of difference. As long as we’re local, that’s our point of difference.

“We could play Newfoundland whaling songs 24 hours a day because the important stuff is the community stuff that goes in between, because no one else's doing that,” he said.

There’s also an ease of business that bigger companies can’t offer: “If a client comes on a Friday at 5pm saying they forgot about the ad for the weekend, it’s not a problem, I live two minutes away. We can act quite quickly.” 

Mike admits he uses technology smartly and sometimes works from home, with his slippers on and a cup of tea in hand. 

In those moments, corporate life feels even further away - and he wouldn’t have it any other way.