Executive Producer

Getting up at 4am for work, five days a week is the norm for Nic McClure, executive producer of the Merrick & Rosso breakfast show on Nova, but it doesn’t mean it gets any easier.

“It’s my fifth year of doing the show and it’s really hard,” she admits.

“I still find myself resisting the alarm clock it’s just not natural to get up in the dark.”
As Merrick Watts and Tim Ross’s producer, McClure is responsible for generating ideas and content for the show as well as co-ordinating the program.

“Say the boys are doing a call-in, I’m also responsible for selecting which callers get through,” she said.

“We’ll chat to the person and if it’s a great story we will run through it with them so it’s succinct for air.

“If they’re driving,” she added, “we’ll pull them over.”

“We also ask callers to smile when they speak as it makes such a difference to the tone of the story.”

Understanding how to manage a phone-in is just a small part of “the knowledge” McClure has acquired over the past 11 years working in radio.

It was a different story when she started out; she had lots of passion but no experience.

“I rang up the number one radio station at the time and said, ‘I want to work for you.’ They asked, ‘Do you have experience?’, and I said ‘no’.”

McClure volunteered to man the phones and made full use of the opportunity to network her way into a job.

“I put 110 per cent in and made sure I spoke to the right people, including the program director.

“He told me to go and get a full-time job in the station and when something came up, he’d let me know.”

Six months later, McClure was working away in sales when the program director offered her a job as a producer on a new show.

This was at the start of her career and she has never looked back.

She’s now earned herself an impressive reputation within the industry and the opportunity to work with Merrick and Rosso.

“I’ve never had a job where I’ve laughed so much,” she said. “The guys (Watts and Ross) are the best they’re just so funny.”