Sunday September 16, 2007
News 24/7
Air Raves
By ANTHONY THANASAYAN
MALAYSIANS awoke to a fresh new sound on the local airwaves on Sept 3. At 6am, Radio24 became the newest and the country’s first all-news radio station.
Radio24, operated by the national news agency Bernama, presents in Bahasa Malaysia and English. For now it is transmitting only in and around the Klang Valley on the FM frequency of 93.9MHz.
The station may go nationwide within the next six months.
However, listeners outside the Klang Valley or even the country need not wait that long to sample what the broadcaster has to offer.
It’s available online at http://www.radio24.com.my/main.html. (The homepage is still under construction, though.)
This baby possesses plenty of potential with its unique mission of providing Malaysian listeners with all the latest news and relevant information.
From my home in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, the broadcaster’s signal strength is robust. Radio24 broadcasts from the 15th floor of Wisma Bernama in Jalan Tun Razak, Kuala Lumpur. It also promises to present live coverage from newsbreaking locations.
Barely 48 hours after its launch, the radio station had its first major opportunity to make good its claim.
The item was on Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s coronary bypass surgery performed on Sept 4 at the National Heart Institute (IJN) in KL.
Anxious to know about the latest condition of the former Prime Minister, I tuned in to Radio24 at about 4.15pm that day in search of a scoop. All the other FM bands that I briefly scanned through on my bandwidth didn’t seem interested in following up on Dr M’s surgery details.
Then suddenly, Radio24 had a newsflash on Dr M!
The station announced that Tun had just been wheeled out of the operating theatre (after a five-hour operation).
The news bit on Dr M being wheeled out was obviously mentioned to indicate that the surgery had gone successfully. This was pointed out by the male and female news anchors in the studio.
Its correspondents stationed at IJN later reported from the scene. However, none of these details or the length of the surgery was pointed out in the breaking news. Such details would have given a clearer picture of the goings-on at IJN, even if Radio24 still only had sketchy details of Dr M’s actual condition at the time.
I was also disappointed that after Radio24 had reported the breaking item once, it didn’t repeat it until it aired a live crossover with one of its correspondents 30 minutes later.
What about concerned listeners who missed hearing the news item on Dr M the first time around?
Radio24 should have not only repeated the story but also kept repeating it every now and then as how international radio stations do it when a news story breaks.
Radio24 should also have shelved its call-in topic that hour with listeners, which was on the five-year unpaid leave option for female civil servants.
In view of Tun’s surgery that day, I reckon a more timely and appropriate subject would be on coronary healthcare and a chat with a local heart specialist.
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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