Listeners of Power 104.5 FM say that although they try to keep in tune with the brand-new station, some find it hard to refrain from turning the dial.
“I really like the Sunday afternoon show ‘Matters of the Heart,’ but other than that, I listen to other stations more often than their’s,” said one male listener.
“The music is a variety of genres and sometimes they have good talk shows however, I am more prone to listen to another station longer than I would with 104.”
The young man suggested that if the station would carry more material that targets a younger demographic, then he would have the tendency to listen to it.
“The new BCB station is a great way to move ahead economically for our people,” said a local disc jockey.
“But if it does not fully cater to its listeners then most likely those same listeners will take their ears elsewhere and think nothing of it.”
The DJ admitted that although it was very hard to plug listeners onto something new, it would be even harder to make them stay.
“Once you have your supporters, you have to do all that you can in order to keep them,” he revealed.
“In this business popularity stems from word of mouth and if you can’t get the word around that your station is one of the best, then it will fail.”
Another listener of the station calls it a ‘one time listen’ saying that she was probed several times in order to tune into its posting.
“I heard about it several times, but I was not interested in listening to it,” she revealed.
“It took me weeks and a lot of coaching from my family just to get me to just listen to it.”
The woman said that after the first few hours of listening to the station, she changed the dial.
“It just wasn’t all that to me. I have nothing against BCB, but I rather watch the broadcasting on television than listen to it on the radio because I wasn’t that entertained by it.”
While Grand Bahamians try to adjust their familiarity with Power 104.5 FM, officials of the station are calling it a “mandate to educate, inform and entertain.”
“What we need to have in the Broadcasting Corpora-tion and broadcast in general is a paradigm shift, a shift that allows us to understand the role that we play in an even greater and larger context,” said the Minister of Broadcasting Obie Wilchcombe about the station during its official launch.
Wilchcombe, a broadcaster himself, said that the importance of the station goes beyond that of entertainment and that it has a stronger purpose.
“So many people who’ve come seeking employment are more interested in playing music as if they were at a party, as opposed to performing a professional task in a broadcast studio,” he said.
He added that conveying such direction was difficult because it was hard to define and inform the public.
“The mandate has not been taken in its very broad context, understanding that it requires so much more thought and so much more effort,” he said.
“It is not just reading the news, entertainment means more than playing music every day and educating means more than just passing on some information.”
By TAMARA DELANEY, Freeport News Reporter
