Longest running serialised radio drama reaches pivotal 200 episode mark

Aug 03, 2015 News

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….as new website is launched for mobile listeners

Merundoi, Guyana’s longest running serialised radio programme aired its season four 200th episode late last week as the show also launched its official website.
This milestone for Merundoi Incorporate was described as an incredibly happy moment in an interview with the show’s Executive Director, Margaret Lawrence.
“We are happy that we are celebrating our 200th episode of the fourth season,” related Lawrence.
The popular radio show Merundoi has been on the air since 2006 and has had four seasons since its inception. This week’s episode will mark 200 episodes since Season Four began and to date it is the region’s longest running serialised radio programme.
To date, the show is listened to in over 78 countries worldwide, with its largest audience located in the United States when it comes to online traffic. Interestingly, the Ukraine holds Merundoi’s third largest online audience, with countries like Turkey, Germany, China and Jamaica rounding out the top ten most listened to international audience.
Guyana possesses the programme’s second highest number of online listeners and locals have the option of listening to the programme on a number radio stations: 98.1FM, 93.1FM, 88.5FM and 104.3FM.
With the soft launch of Merundoi’s newly revamped website, its producers are aiming to attract more online and mobile phone listeners.

The programme’s success has been credited to, not only its voice actors, but to the methodologies organisers have adopted in producing each episode.
“The methodology’s modelling focuses on how you can transform negative behaviours into positive behaviour. In addition to producing the radio programme, we would go into communities to have conducted interactive exercises that touch on Merundoi’s contents… we enforce the messages from the programme,” said Merundoi’s Executive Director.
This methodology was designed by the US Centre For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the Merundoi was initially a project to combat HIV/AIDS kick-started by President’s Emergency Plan For Aids Relief (PEPFAR).
Throughout the years the radio programme has also collaborated with a number of organisations and has received funding from the European Union (EU) and the Global Fund as well as several other local enterprises.
Merundoi’s fourth season has been the programme’s longest running season, beginning in 2013, and has tackled issues ranging from domestic violence, waste management, voter registration, sexual and reproductive healthcare and social tolerance.
In all, Merundoi has produced over 1000 episodes and has no intentions of slowing down, according to Lawrence.
“Since we started, we have had over 1000 episodes 15 minutes in length. It has made us the longest running radio serial drama in Guyana and the Caribbean. We are very proud of the achievement because we are very popular, especially in the Diaspora,” Lawrence shared.
According to its producers, the drama has gotten an exceptional audience in the Region Nine hinterland districts, as Merundoi Incorporate has done several outreach projects in Annai, Surama, and Lethem.
“We have been doing street theatre/forum theatre in these community projects. This is where we have a live show, after which we talk about the skit and more or less generate solutions to highlighted problems,” explained Project Operator at Merundoi Inc., Durwin Humphrey.
Through such projects the organisation, he added, has been able to directly engage it’s listeners throughout the country’s Administrative Regions, as well as reinforce the programme’s aims and messages through community activities. In addition to communities, Merundoi Inc. also conducts regular outreach programmes in prisons and schools, which resulted noticeable positive changes in the behaviours of both inmates and students respectively.
For the 200th episode, Durwin explained that the website launch will play an integral role in further engaging a larger audience while inviting them to join in the conversation about all of Merundoi’s episodes.
“You can now listen to [Merundoi] on your phone, granted that you are in a wifi zone,” said Humphrey. However the organisation hopes that with a soon passage of a Liberalisation of the Telecommunications Act more people would have enough data to listen to the programme wherever they are.
The organisation is also in the process of designing a Merundoi software application so that smartphone users would be able to access the drama’s episodes more directly. As for the future of Merundoi, Humphrey related that the programme will continue to push boundaries, with a shocking conclusion to one character’s arch coming along the way.

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