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RADIO BY REQUEST

Aug 30, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

 

‘Best By Request’, the radio programme on which the late Pancho Carew made his name is back on the air. It is now aired on Radio Roraima 100.1 FM each weekday from 1pm to 4 pm.
It is barely, however, a shadow of its former self. The ‘Best by Request’ or BBR, used to be very popular in the 1970s and 1980s, because it played the latest pop songs and was also a request show that allowed you to send out birthday or anniversary greetings.
It was never a call-in show until much later when a subsequent host allowed persons to call in. But in its original format, it allowed persons to mail in their greetings.
Now reintroduced after going into a remission there is a promo calling on persons to mail in their greetings. Yes, mail it in!
Three years before every home in Guyana is to have a computer in them, and in the midst of new media such as Facebook and Twitter, the local radio station is asking persons to send in their birthday greetings.
They are not receiving that many, judging from recent programmes of the BBR. It may be that not many people listen to the radio anymore. Or it may be that those who listen are not keen to go out and buy a piece of writing paper and an envelope, and then post their greetings.
With so many persons now owning cellular phones, it is much better if persons were simply allowed to call in on a special number with a toll per every call. In this way, the radio station would get a fee for having these calls. It can work out an arrangement with the local telephone company whereby for very call it receives, it gets a percentage of the cost of the phone call.
With Facebook and Twitter, NCN can also establish a special page whereby persons can post their greetings which can then be read out on the show. It is simply asking too much for persons to mail in their requests.
Death announcements are a different kettle of fish. These announcements have to be placed. But here again, NCN is not doing good business. Before death announcements became popular on television, the radio hosts used to struggle to get all the death announcements and messages recorded before the time ran out.
These days it is a different story. Only a few death announcements are aired each night. This presents a problem for folks who do not have access to the city-based television channels that broadcast video death announcements. These folks, mainly those living in the countryside and interior, cannot get information on those who have died.
In certain of the community television stations, some attempt is being made to address this problem, but a great many folks are not able to access their death announcements on television.
It shows how much radio has declined since the introduction of television. Years ago, persons used to have their radios on from morning until nightfall. Radio then was for entertainment, information and education. Today when you examine the results in English Language and English Literature, you wonder at the cause of the many failures.
Yet the students today ought to be doing much better. There are far more resources available to them in the classroom, and with the various software programmes around, our students should be performing much better.
One of the reasons given why the older generations did better at these subjects was the exposure they had to quality programmes on the radio. They listened to a lot of radio since there was no television. You learnt something by simply listening to the radio. Can the same be said today?
There were both local and foreign programmes aired and the latter were always of a quality that allowed you, by simply listening, to improve your vocabulary and versatility in the language arts.
These days you turn on the radio and you are appalled at some of the idleness that comes out of the mouths of some radio announcers.
There are still quality foreign programmes around, ones that can help our students improve on their language skills and the local radio stations may wish to give serious consideration to airing some more of these programmes, instead of filling almost every slot with music.

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