Isabel Tiong asked:


69 years ago, at exactly 6 in the morning, announcer Hal Bowie took his seat before a microphone in a little studio at the top of the Heacock Building in Escolta, and bid his unseen audience good morning.  Thus was born the fourth commercial radio station to operate in Manila.  In just a few years, with the entire Philippine archipelago caught in the maelstrom of the Second World War, the fledgling station – which took the call sign KZRH  -  would buck the challenge of history and remain as the only surviving radio station in the country. 

Its auspicious beginnings as the mouthpiece of one of the largest department stores in the Pacific must have laid the groundwork for the station’s commercial viability all these years – a major factor in the survival of the so-called “stepchild of media arts.”

New as it was, KZRH management led by Bertrand Silen was not just armed with the technical know-how in radio operations, but likewise had fundamental marketing knowledge down pat.  They knew what radio listeners liked and disliked.

Musical variety shows, comedy skits, and short newscasts were the order of the day.  Jazz and ballads became standard fare.  Together with American wit, the English language spread.  KZRH found itself as an advertising medium, with sponsors like Purico underwriting specific shows which carried their names.  Apart from 15-minute blocktime sold to advertisers, commercial spots mixing announcements with music were also produced.   KZRH found itself amidst lucrative times.

Then came the grim shadow of war.  The Japanese Imperial Army took over the sophisticated equipment, which eventually got blown sky-high by the Americans.  And while Silen’s staff – considered the best in the Far East – found themselves either in Bataan, at the internment camps of Santo Tomas and Los Banos, within the guerilla movement, or simply felled by enemy bullets, plans for the rebirth of KZRH upon liberation were kept alive. 

Upon being released, Silen sought help from the National Broadcasting Company in New York to secure new transmitters, and with the Elizalde family financing the new operations at the Insular Life Building on Plaza Cervantes, KZRH was back on the air under the auspices of Manila Broadcasting Company on July 1, 1946 – just in time to cover the inauguration of the new Republic.

Soon after, the International Telecommunications Union adjusted the call letters of Philippine radio, and all allusions to the western United States through the letter K were removed.  Until today, all radio stations in the Philippines begin with the letter D.

What followed in the next three decades is now collectively known as the golden years of Philippine radio.  Programming flourished and a new breed of radio personalities became cultural icons.  As the recording industry grew, the live orchestras of yore soon gave way to music on vinyl.  Cover versions and Disc Jockeys came into being.  Radio dramas hit an unprecedented boom, eventually translating to the celluloid screen.

Lina Flor’s immortal  Gulong ng Palad, which debuted in 1949, led a slew of soap operas that filled the airlanes in the mornings and afternoons.  Because they had the housewives and sometimes the rest of the domestic ménage as captive audiences, these dramatic serials were strongly supported by major advertisers whose sales messages got very close attention through each saga. Radio dramas picked up on domestic relations, but also featured action, adventure, horror, and even murder-mysteries. Appealing to the imagination as well as to real-life need, DZRH secretaries fondly remember some callers even insisting on speaking to Ginang Hukom herself.

Indeed, DZRH easily adopted the habit of setting trends and institutionalizing them.  Sportscasting dean Willie Hernandez, the network’s comptroller in the mid-fifties, lent his voice to sports coverages and in so doing, made legendary Filipino basketeers like Carlos Loyzaga, Francisco Rabat, and Luis Lorenzo household names.

The feisty commentator Rafael Yabut, also had his sterling years with DZRH.  Starting out as the station electrician, he rose through the ranks to become the station’s PR man.  Loyal fans kept glued to their radios when he hosted the game show Ruleta Musikal.  On the top-rating Tayo’y Mag-aliw, Yabut dwelt on government and politics, family values, trivia, and entertainment.  

But it is easily Dely Mapayo who has been – up to this day – the most widely known personality behind the microphone at DZRH. Her easy chatter, contagious laughter, and sparkling wit won her sponsors and hosts of listeners through her career’s work. From the PMC-backed Tugtugin Natin to Himig Panghapunan in vintage years, and eventually the starkly simple Tiya Dely, which DZRH still airs today,  the lady and the station have remained synonymous for over 50 years. Radio quiz shows also emanated from the DZRH studios.  In Spell-to-Win, household appliances were at stake for someone who could spell words like “bouillabaise”. On Best of the Band, popular crooner Bimbo Danao tried to stump the audience with his original game format a-la “name that tune.”  And on Palmolive’s Knowledge Unlimited, even listeners contributed questions such as “what war took place in 1812?”

The Vicks Variety show opened doors for a new program format that addressed Tagalog-speaking audiences with pop-concert presentation of Philippine music.  Singer Jimmie Navarro who won the DZRH radio popularity poll, replaced Mystery Singer Cecil Lloyd and teamed up with Priscilla in performing a new romantic duet every week. While listeners wrote to request old favorites, new compositions were also introduced to the public. 

Letter-sending, has indeed, contributed greatly to the way DZRH developed over the years. Ira Davis, who produced the long-running programs of Philippine Manufacturing Company, patiently read through thousands of letters that came in every week. The notes were routed to management and gave them firsthand information on what sort of radio entertainment – even commercial copy – that listeners preferred.  And the advertisers took note of those market preferences. 

In later years, DZRH received more immediate feedback — through the telephone, through pocket pagers, through mobile technology, and today, through cyberspace.   But the formula remains the same: innovate…improve…listen…keep the pulse. And decades hence, the station which survived the horrors of war is also surviving the competition. DZRH as the flagship station of Manila Broadcasting Company is proud to be the purveyor of news as it should be delivered, adhering to the highest standards of broadcasting excellence in the country.  It continues to be a witness to Philippine history as it unfolds, and yet remains faithful to the mandate of fair and responsible journalism.  In 1986 it was the only station that aired nationwide a detailed account of the ouster of President Ferdinand Marcos.  Three years later, DZRH reporters found themselves risking life and limb to keep the public abreast of the attempted coup d’etat, and manifesting its spirit of compassion to wounded rebel soldiers.

DZRH today boasts of veteran radioman Joe Taruc anchoring the DZRH team in defining the public affairs program genre from the Pinoy perspective. Despite the seeming erosion of the morning news by the telemagazines,  Taruc remains confident that nothing beats the immediacy of radio. 

DZRH News Director Andy Vital, on the other hand, has  taken new media by the horns for the station’s benefit. Internet radio and live chats are used to maximize the station’s accessibility to audiences both here and abroad.  He has also encouraged popular DZRH announcers like Ruth Abao and Rey Sibayan to maintain individual blogs.  And with his iconic colleague “Lakay” Deo Macalma  seemingly attuned to the secret lives of public figures and celebrities alike, vigilance in good governance through reports from his bubwits is still in keeping with the station’s mien for  popular entertainment. But perhaps it is in the field of public service where DZRH has truly earned its merits.    Through Operation Tulong – the station’s socio-civic arm first launched in 1978 –  corporate social responsibility and anonymous Samaritans work hand in hand. Armed with their credo of Serbisyong Bayan, DZRH responds to the needs of the ordinary man-on-the-street with the same compassion and determination it devotes to massive disaster-relief operations, through networking support from advertisers, NGO’s, and government agencies. 

On its 69th anniversary, DZRH will conduct a medical-dental mission in cooperation with the Philippine Medical Association, Gat. Andres Bonifacio Medical Center, the Department of Health, the Philippine Air Force,  the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, PAGCOR, and other generous donors.   DZRH has also invited the Optometrists Association of the Philippines to provide free eye examinations, with MBC donating 500 free eyeglasses.  Teaming up with Islands Exhibit Link, the station will likewise hold a two-day Job Fair, with more than 40 participating companies and recruitment firms providing domestic and international work opportunities.   DZRH has also invited the Public Attorney’s office, Batas Barangay, and their network of lawyers to provide free legal assistance.  And for those availing of these public service offerings, DZRH is also serving free porridge (lugaw) as a gesture of unity with the masses who have supported them all these years. 

Over a decade ago, the station embarked on a “One Nation, One Station” initiative, expanding its coverage to an unprecedented 97% of the Philippine archipelago. To date, DZRH is the only station in the country that is on the air nationwide 24/7 on stereo-quality, simulcast via satellite to relay stations in key provincial cities.  Through all these, DZRH and the top brass at Manila Broadcasting Company have remained fully cognizant of their target listeners and have used this to master their programming thrust.  They have convinced advertisers to support their efforts at activation and integration in reaching mass audiences.  DZRH taps into the consciousness of the Pinoy, takes inherent socio-cultural phenomena like fiestas, raffles, and machismo sports. . . and actively makes them tick.    At the same time, through creative thinking by the staff and high-quality execution by their announcers, DZRH has translated traditional broadcasting techniques like talk-radio and soap operas into productive and impacting forms of integration or product placement that have become increasingly more efficient in moving brands across a complex media landscape. 

 

But it is the way DZRH announcers today relate to their listeners that truly spells the difference. It is a legacy handed down through generations of broadcasters who knew their audiences.   It is foresight brought about by the changing of the times. It is a style acquired through personal interaction with the man-on-the-street.  And it is a mantle of leadership, new experiences, and empathy toward mankind brought about by having made it through 69 years.

Congratulations, DZRH – kaunaunahan sa Pilipinas!

simon ramsden asked:


 

 

 

 

“Eight days a week is not enough to show I care” crooned the guitarist, serenading us on the deck of the lunch-cruise barge as we drifted down the Loboc river on Bohol. “Eight days a week, I loooooove you” he continued, the plus-forties tapping their feet or singing along. I wouldn’t go out and buy a Beatles album, as I’ve heard their songs too many times, but I do like it when someone sings one, as some of my first memories are of their songs. I pondered what it is about the Philippines that makes its inhabitants so musically talented – pretty much everywhere you go there is a guitarist playing – maybe these guitar-playing and singing talents are something that the country can thank the Spanish for.

I don’t get the impression that the Spanish are thanked for much else except Christianity, judging by the reverence in which they hold chief Lapu Lapu, who killed the Spanish conquistador Ferdinand Magellan on the nearby island of Mactan in 1521. He had sailed there in order to teach the inhabitants who was boss and, badly misjudging their fighting spirit, had decided to leave all of his mercenary forces aboard in order to save the glory and gore for the meagre Spanish contingent. After telling the mercenaries to watch carefully in order to learn the superior Spanish art of war, he marched his band of country-men ashore, only to be promptly hacked to bits, with most of his companions. This display rather confused his audience of native mercenaries, one of whom remarked that he wasn’t very impressed with the superior Spanish art of war and preferred the old-fashioned approach of just lopping heads off with a big axe.  

This text about Magellan is a bit of a digression. As a further digression within this digression, the reader may be interested to know that, according to recent findings, the straits of Magellan off the Cape of Good Hope weren’t actually first discovered by Ferdinand Magellan at all but by a Chinese admiral in 1421. For a fascinating and plausible theory that the Chinese discovered pretty much everywhere before Europeans did, I recommend the reader check out the book “1421, the year China discovered the world”, by Gavin Menzies.

As if to reinforce my musical impression of the Filipinos, our lunch barge pulled up at a pontoon on which sat about forty ukulele players and singers, aged from about eight to eighty, their faces wreathed in huge smiles. The small children wriggled with impatience at having to sit still, whilst the young women fluttered their eyelashes and, when I smiled at them, blushed and looked away, giggling to each other. Granddad plucked intently at an instrument I didn’t recognise whilst a young lad strummed a guitar bigger than he was. After a while I noticed one of the parents nod an ‘OK’ to a group of boys, who promptly downed their instruments and dived into the river, one of them climbing up onto our barge and then using it as a diving board. Some of the day-trippers aboard backed away from the spot where he was climbing, fearing a soaking when he hit the water, but they needn’t have worried, as he jumped far out and dived in head-first, hardly causing a ripple as he went in, let alone a splash. “Hmm, maybe I should have a go at that” I thought, “then they’d really have something to worry about” (my water displacement is, shall we say, rather greater than the boy’s is). After the lovely pontoon music show we finished off our lunch. The food was competent rather than superb but was enjoyed by all except my son Nigel, who turned his nose up at everything, which was no surprise, as he’s only eight. Thankfully he eventually found something he could enjoy, the superb mango, watermelon and pineapple, which tasted way better than, in my experience, they ever do in Europe.

 

I sat and watched the jungle slide by on each side of the river. Palm trees reached out from either side and above the barge, their fronds swaying in the gentle breeze and the sunlight filtering through them, dappling the decks in hazy, soft sunshine.  As I watched my wife Fon fuss over my son, a feeling of contentment and peace came over me. Everything seemed OK, even the things about life that were less than perfect. I find that as I grow older I experience happiness in a different way. When I was younger it was all about losing myself in intense concentration while doing something exciting, now it’s more about tranquillity and family values.

 

Other highlights on Bohol are the great scuba diving and snorkelling. I’m not much of a scuba diver so I went snorkelling to a spot near the little islet of Balicasag, which I unreservedly recommend. We left our resort aboard a local banka boat at the ***** of dawn in order to get a chance to see the dolphins that for some reason appear at that hour. I had somewhat cynically thought that this was probably unlikely to happen, but they appeared on schedule and in numbers, then swam around us for a good hour. They seemed to be swimming in family groups, some of them just barely breaking the surface and others (maybe displaying the exuberance of youth) jumping right out of the water.  They are such lovely creatures, with their funny faces seemingly permanently grinning at some private joke. We arrived at Balicasag a while later and, after an unusual-for-me breakfast of steamed prawns, friend eggs and rice (which tasted better than I expected it to), we boarded a much smaller, hand-powered boat. Motorised boats are forbidden to enter Balicasag Marine Sanctuary in an initiative to protect the flaura and fauna: this arrangement appears, judging from the profusion of fish swimming around the coral in the crystal-clear water, to have worked. A long column of fish swam in an almost military formation along the reef wall. They seemed so ordered and organised  that I wondered if one of them was in charge. Was it the fish in front? Or maybe he was just the expendable point-man and the fish behind him was the one in charge? 

 

A large cloud of small bait-fish swam by. I took off my life-vest (which had been supporting me in the most comfortable fashion as I had lazily floated and watched the marine life) and dived down, feeling pleased with myself for hiring flippers, as I’m a weak swimmer without them. I swam straight through the cloud of fish. At one point all I could see around me were little black fish, illuminated by scattered rays of sunlight. Beautiful, just lovely. The most beautiful thing about the experience was the way that they swam away from my moving limbs, almost as if by magnetic repulsion, all maintaining exactly the same distance from me. It felt like being clothed in fish. I don’t remember ever enjoying a snorkelling experience so much.

 

The Chocolate Hills of Bohol are the island’s most popular tourist attraction and deserve the attention they get, as they look most peculiar. 200 hundred-foot tall earthen mounds jut out of a  flood-plain, most topped in grass and looking like the perfect place for a picnic. Almost all of them are almost perfectly conical in shape. I tried to research the reason for their strange shape, but couldn’t find an answer – a bit like the authors of the official tourist tablet at the site, who didn’t seem to know either. The hills are reminiscent of the English burial ‘barrows’ (or mounds) on Salisbury Plain, only much, much bigger.  It looked as is, instead of a few prehistoric chieftains lying underground, here there were dozens of dynasties of emperors, each interred under a couple of tens of thousand of tons of earth, in a scene a bit like Salisbury plain meeting the pyramids of Giza.

 

For our first visit to the Chocolate Hills we hired a driver and mini-van and were taken to the tourist centre on the single hill which has been developed for the purpose and which is covered in concrete, fast-food outlets, hawkers and screaming children. When I asked the driver if he could vary his route so that we could experience the scenery without the crowds, he reacted with the same incomprehension as I remember getting from a donkey at a sea-side fare in England, when I used my feet on its flanks to attempt to make it change its customary route. A few days after this disappointing experience we returned to try and experience the hills in a more natural way, hiring a motorbike on which we could meander through the lanes and take in the experience at our own pace. We had planned to hire a local guide (when I say ‘local’, I mean one of the farmers working amongst the hills) and to then climb one of them. We were thwarted by a rain-storm, which was a bit unfortunate, but at least gives us a good reason to return. Those readers who are wary of motorbike-riding in SE Asia are advised to get themselves driven to the Chocolate Hills in a minivan and to hire an additional helper to trail them on a bike, and then to hop on the bike when they reach the hills, where the small roads are relatively safe.

 

After checking out one of the Philippines’ best beaches, why not visit some of Thailand’s: www.andamanadventures.com