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New talk Ten years ago Holmes crept out of Wellington. Now he returns - a manic, multi-media personality - to replace Lindsay Yeo on 2ZB. A DECADE is a long time in radio. That long ago Paul Holmes headed north on the radio equivalent of a mission from God.
His brief was to breathe life into Auckland's near moribund IZB, then struggling with ratings hovering round the station manager's hat size.
He returns on May 19 via the Newstalk ZB national hookup as a sort of multi-media supremo, ousting 25-year 2ZB breakfast slot veteran Lindsay Yeo, a casualty of the cost-cutting attractions of networking and the dreaded ratings slump.
Yeo, stuck in a fuzzy 70s timewarp, shimmies backwards to the gentler world of breakfast on Classic Hits 90FM.
In the mid-80s, Holmes didn't exactly take Aucklanders by storm; it was months before they put aside suspicion that his arrival was part of some Capital-inspired conspiracy.
Legendary 1ZB brekkie show host and train spotter Merv Smith triggered the station's slide when he headed off to rival Radio i taking most of his fans with him.