More Questions Than Answers · Episode 2 · 31 May 2026

Kacey Baker: From the Hot 30 to Hollywood (20 Years, 3 Careers, 1 Voice)

Episode notes

Kacey Baker has been the voice in your ear for 20 years. From Wild FM to the Hot 30 Countdown, from Kyle and Jackie O to Channel 7, from Warner Brothers to Hollywood. He's a DJ, producer, voiceover artist, creative director, and filmmaker who's built three separate careers in three separate industries without ever slowing down.

On this episode of More Questions Than Answers, Ron Haryanto sits down with Kacey Baker for a conversation about evolution, reinvention, and what it actually takes to stay relevant when the industry keeps moving the goalposts.

Kacey didn't start out trying to be a voiceover artist. He was a drummer in a rock band. When band members stopped showing up to rehearsals, he taught himself Cubase on floppy discs and started making dance music in his bedroom. Six months later, he was production manager at Wild FM. Then came the call from Central Station Records asking him to mega mix Wild 11, the one that made him the most requested mega mixer in the country.

What followed was full immersion: radio announcing, voicing commercials, DJing live, producing tracks, and building a name synonymous with Australian dance music culture in the early 2000s. He became the voice of Today FM, the Hot 30 Countdown, Kyle and Jackie O, Channel V, and eventually Channel 7.

In 2010 he was dropped from Today FM and Austereo with no warning. So he bought a camera, taught himself filmmaking, and spent seven years trying to break into an industry that didn't want him. A horror short sent to Warner Brothers by email got a reply. A political comedy made during COVID went viral and brought calls from Hollywood, meetings with United Talent Agency and a film that went into finance before the writers' strike shut it all down. Then, in the space of a month, the radio work and the film deal fell away, and he had to start again.

This conversation is about the intersection of passion and necessity: the phone calls that change everything and the ones that take everything away, AI and the future of radio, and the evolution from drummer to DJ to voiceover artist to director.

Inside the episode

• Starting as a drummer in a rock band and teaching himself Cubase on floppy discs
• Becoming production manager at Wild FM at 20 and getting the call to mega mix Wild 11
• Working with Kyle and Jackie O on the Hot 30 Countdown and becoming the voice of Today FM
• Getting dropped from Austereo with no warning and losing everything overnight
• Sending a horror short to Warner Brothers and getting the reply that changed his film career
• Writing a political comedy during COVID that went viral and opened doors to Hollywood
• Losing Channel 7, KIIS FM and the Warner Brothers deal in the same week
• The future of radio, AI, and what it means to stay relevant
• The difference between passion when you're young and necessity when you have a family

More Questions Than Answers is a monthly podcast where Ron Haryanto sits down with Australian artists, songwriters, producers and industry leaders to talk honestly about creative careers. Powered by The Mentor Academy.

More episodes

Episode 4Marcia HinesEpisode 3Michelle Grace HunderEpisode 1TimomaticEpisode 0Ron Haryanto