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Tv & Radio > News & Features Sunday March 18, 2007
So, how was your Chap Goh Mei?
AIR RAVES
By ANTHONY THANASAYAN
CHINESE Malaysians observed Chap Goh Mei on March 4. This is day that signals the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations, which, this year, began a fortnight before on Feb 18.
To get a feel for people’s mood on the final day of the festivities, I drove into Kuala Lumpur and parked my car near a busy intersection in Setapak. I turned on the radio and settled in to see how our radio stations’ programmers and DJs were doing at tuning into the city’s mood.
I began listening at 7pm and, after about an hour and a half, I have to say I wasn’t impressed.
First, though, let me set the scene: to begin with, I must point out that “busy” would not have described KL that Sunday evening. However, as night fell, there was a gradual and steady swelling of the number of people and cars on the roads. Several Chinese businesses, surprisingly, remained open and seemed set to stay that way till late.
None of this was captured on radio.
The fact that these were the concluding hours of Chap Goh Mei or that many listeners would have been returning home from their holidays seemed far from most DJs’ minds.
That to me was a real pity. Here was a golden opportunity for stations to shine by doing something different for a change rather than just playing music all the time and it was well and truly missed.
RedFM’s female DJ gave relationship advice, Hitz.fm had its usual Rick Dees chart show, Fly FM had some sort of “static” music on the air, etc, etc, same old, same old.
Opening up the phone lines and getting listeners to talk about the occasion could have made for some good, interactive programming, don’t you think? Not to mention shedding some light on how the Chinese mark this occasion for non-Chinese listeners, which is always a good thing in this multicultural, multi-religious country of ours.
On the short waves, it was a different story.
China Radio International (CRI) from Beijing aired dozens of wonderful seasonal features (in English). Referring to Chap Goh Mei as the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) celebrations, the broadcaster highlighted, among many events, a grand party at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on March 3 that was attended by the city’s political, intellectual, literary and social elite.
Despite living in the cyber age, the writer insists that radio still provides a unique window on the world. When he isn’t scanning bandwidths, he helps to raise awareness of positive living with pets through his organisation, Petpositive (Malaysian Animal-Assisted Therapy for the Disabled and Elderly Association).
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