Mickey Maher

Michael "Mickey" Maher is the music director, assistant programming director and CASUAL announcer for B105 FM in Brisbane, Queensland Australia. He is currently nominated for Music Director of the year in the Australian Commercial Radio Awards (ACRA)

Early life

Mickey Maher grew up on Queensland's Gold Coast attending Broadbeach State Primary School in years 1-7 followed by Merrimac State High School for year 8-10 and played AFL for the Broadbeach Cats throughout his teenage years.

Career

Mickey made his commercial radio break when Gold Coast station, KROQ (now 92.5 Gold FM), late night announcer invited Mickey and a mate to come in and check out the radio station one night, Mickey recalls falling in love with radio the second he stepped inside the building. He continued with more regular visits, and was soon paneling for various announcers at the station and helping out in various other roles within the station in between school, before being offered a carting/audio transfer and paneling gig at age 15, for which he dropped out of school to take up. After KROQ went bust his reputation managed to pick him up his first on air role, doing a mid dawn shift at SeaFM, this role soon evolved into late NiGHTS on air, and again, carting. This is also where he first picked up his interest in music selection.

At age 17 he managed to pick up a role at Brisbane commercial station, B105 FM - working on the "black thunders", now known as the "Street team" from here he managed to show his skills on air and in music and worked his way the programming ladder. After 8 years his determination saw him jump from strength to strength, managing to present a number 1 rating morning shift and then afternoon shift, and also managing to take on an assistant music director role, before being promoted to music director and finally assistant programming director, at this point he decided to advance his career and moved to b105's Perth sister station 92.9FM as Music director and assistant programming director. He remained in this role for 18 months, working with much of the team he currently works with at b105, in this 18 months 92.9 made a move from 6th in the ratings to third.

His next move saw him make a complete format change, directing music for Triple M and was heavily involved in the stations programming change from "Rock" to "Play whatever we want". He also took on a position producing the Triple M AFL commentary broadcast.

In June 2006 he made the move back to Brisbane, indeed back to B105 FM's Music director and assistant program director role, where he currently works. Mickey's move back has seen the station jump from strength to strength, seeing the station move from 8th place, to a very steady 4th place, that is constantly moving up, while most other stations quickly lose ground.

See also