Wave Fm 88

[AyG]

It seems that Wave FM 88 is closing down today. Anyone know why?

I used to listen to Met 107, but switched to Wave FM when Met 107 changed its format, dropped its English-speaking DJs and added lots of artless African-American music.

I guess that only leave 102.5 now for Western pop and rock - unless anyone knows of any other alternatives in Bangkok.

[mezzoninny]

I suspect the contract is just up, and it's just a general lack of ad revenue for English-language, foreign music stations.

If you weren't in BKK in the 80s or 90s, you probably can't imagine it was actually home to several pretty good stations, each with a fairly distinct format and style. It used to be that they can get a fair amount of Thai listeners, but I guess this is no longer the case (or at least the ppl in charge think so). The former DJs are all around somewhere but not able to stay in this business. Surviving stations like 107 have gradually moved away from announcements in English.

Personally it was awesome when 107 and Get both had a quasi-indie-pop thing going for a while, or have specialist shows, UK new singles release show, etc, and Smooth 105 is my absolute favorite mix of music anywhere. I grew up on those stations so it's always sad to see another one go, even if Wave's music mix isn't my cup of tea (I suspect cost issues). Right now there's 102.5, 105.5 and 107, and if you don't mind Thai pop, stations like 89 and 89.5 have mushy western pop to match their Thai fare.

Oh and I still have recordings from the last day of Breeze 98.5, someone on a hard drive...

Edited October 31, 2011 by mezzoninny

[Pseudolus]

Appears it is not closing just being rebranded - radio friendly or something like that. New DJ line ups as well.

[tpthai2]

Appears it is not closing just being rebranded - radio friendly or something like that. New DJ line ups as well.

Adam, I am sorry to see it go. "Rebranding?" Did you hear anything about that? Thanks ...

[Abduljabbar01]

Reformatting their show line up might be what they are trying to do. FM 88 is one of my favorite stations on the dial.

One of my close friends who runs a very popular show on Sunday nights. His name is Jim Davidson; he's a very charming fellow, with many stories of his travels. Anyway, he does a Sunday night show at FM 98.5. His program is very popular amongst Expats, Asians including Thai's.

One night during his scheduled time slot a few months ago, Jim wasn't there on the radio during his scheduled time slot. The show format was completely they were playing all Thai song.

Jim told me a week later about his radio program and the responses from the listenership. On the following day and week, callers and sponsors were calling into the radio station asking about the show and if it had been canceled or if Jim Davidson left or died (He's 97 years old). Both listeners and sponsors (Foodland, Long Table restaurant, Bed supper club, and etc.) wanted him back. It was back the following week, with an added pay raise, and some new sponsors.

The owner / manager didn't understand how important Jim Davidson show was and other shows on Sunday nights as well put on by other expats.

The station FM 88 is located in Ekamai road. I used to know exactly where it was but have since forgotten. Though, just wait and see what happens and if you don't like the new style. Call them up and make it known. Their address is Koolest Company Limited: Ekamai Power Center, D1-3 – 3rd Floor, Soi Sukhumvit 63, North-Prakanong, Wattana, Bangkok 10110.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Abduljabbar01

[DJPaulJackson]

Hi Guys

As a Wave FM 88 afternoon drivetime presenter DJ, we were told on Saturday that Monday 31st was our last day. So thats it ! Some of the posts above are correct, selling advertising on English Radio is hard at the best of times. After Sars, Airport closures, Bird Flu, Red shirts and now floods the owners have given up basically.

As a radio dj here since the mid 80's on 95.5 FMX then Virgin Smooth 105 and for the past 4 years Wave FM 88 it is very frustrating when this happens . Not sure if there will ever be another. Most radio station bosses go for the easy sell formats and being in English is not on their list.

Lets see !!

Paul Jackson

[sungod]

Sorry to hear that Paul,

Listen to you most days on my way home. Pleased keep us informed of any worthwhile new stations that may emerge. Its a little strange here that its a battle for English radio stations to survive (especially with the number of expats in BKK) Malaysia /Singapore have some great stations,

Edited November 1, 2011 by sungod

[Abduljabbar01]

Hi Guys

As a Wave FM 88 afternoon drivetime presenter DJ, we were told on Saturday that Monday 31st was our last day. So thats it ! Some of the posts above are correct, selling advertising on English Radio is hard at the best of times. After Sars, Airport closures, Bird Flu, Red shirts and now floods the owners have given up basically.

As a radio dj here since the mid 80's on 95.5 FMX then Virgin Smooth 105 and for the past 4 years Wave FM 88 it is very frustrating when this happens . Not sure if there will ever be another. Most radio station bosses go for the easy sell formats and being in English is not on their list.

Lets see !!

Paul Jackson

Well, Paul. Sorry to see you go. Your station and you helped us connect to where we came from abroad. You knew what we liked.

Good day,

[SICA]

I for one am gutted! Saturday afternoons on Wave we're my teenage years and i drove my wife crazy as i knew all the words to every song.

You'll be sadly missed.

Good luck for future endeavours.

Sad, very sad

[AyG]

There's something very short-sighted in Thai thinking.

The country's economic development is retarded because of the lack of English speaking skills.

There used to be a little English on TV - a 30 minute news segment on one channel late evening. Now there's none afaik.

There used to be a couple of English language radio stations in Bangkok. Now there's none.

How on earth is this country going to cope in a global economy if young people aren't exposed to the world's most important international language?

[tpthai2]

There's something very short-sighted in Thai thinking.

The country's economic development is retarded because of the lack of English speaking skills.

There used to be a little English on TV - a 30 minute news segment on one channel late evening. Now there's none afaik.

There used to be a couple of English language radio stations in Bangkok. Now there's none.

How on earth is this country going to cope in a global economy if young people aren't exposed to the world's most important international language?

[tpthai2]

+1 ....

"CHINESE PEOPLE are becoming increasingly obsessed with speaking English, and efforts to improve English-language proficiency mean that at some stage this year, the world’s most populous nation will become the world’s largest English-speaking country. Two billion people are learning English worldwide, and a very large percentage of them are in China." TIT (The Irish Times)

[Mobi]

Hi Guys

As a Wave FM 88 afternoon drivetime presenter DJ, we were told on Saturday that Monday 31st was our last day. So thats it ! Some of the posts above are correct, selling advertising on English Radio is hard at the best of times. After Sars, Airport closures, Bird Flu, Red shirts and now floods the owners have given up basically.

As a radio dj here since the mid 80's on 95.5 FMX then Virgin Smooth 105 and for the past 4 years Wave FM 88 it is very frustrating when this happens . Not sure if there will ever be another. Most radio station bosses go for the easy sell formats and being in English is not on their list.

Lets see !!

Paul Jackson

Hi Paul, I have enjoyed your programme and your station and am sorry to see its demise, although, as you will see below, I am not particularly surprised.

I don't know how long you have been around in Thailand, but some of you old hands out there may recall the mid to late seventies when there were a couple of English radio stations, (I think FM 105 was one from memory), that were shut down by the military government, as at that time it was illegal to broadcast anything in a foreign language.

Incidentally, Jim Davidson and another legendary DJ, John Dienne, were the English stalwarts of those long ago radio days.

Then in around 1979, FM 107 English Language radio was launched and I was the first General Manager of that station, which was based in Siam Square.

To cut a long story short, all the programmes we put out (24/7) we pre-recorded at our Siam Square studios but were broadcast to sound as though they were live, including, believe it or not, giving very accurate time checks throughout the programmes.

We were encouraged to do this by our ‘sponsor’ in what was then then MOT (later to become MCOT) who fought off all comers to keep our station on the air and claimed that as the broadcasts were not ‘live’ they didn’t break the foreign language broadcasting laws.

In the early days it was a huge struggle; we had no sponsors and very little investment, but over the months, we attracted some investors (at very punitive interest rates, I might add) and as part of the deal with MOT, we purchased and imported a brand new FM transmitter from the USA, which, I imagine, is still is still being used today.

The first year was a nightmare; not only did we find it hard to attract sponsors, but both the Thai Press and one of the major English language newspapers seemed determined to get us shut down. They claimed we were operating illegally, but at the heart of all their opposition was the fact that we had something that they wanted. They were jealous – pure and simple.

There was barely a day went by when there wasn’t yet another attack on our station and further calls to shut us down. I fully expected to be off the air at any moment and quite possibly, kicking my heels in a jail cell.

Our radio format was modern (for those times) and simple. We had play lists (which were quite rare in those days) which was a mix of tuneful pop music, light jazz, a few oldies, a bit of main stream rock and so on.

The DJ’s were only allowed to play music on the play list, which was frequently updated as new albums and singles became available to us . It was a kind of cool, ‘Southern California’ type of format and our DJ’s were encouraged to keep the banter to a minimum and talk briefly over the non-stop music.

No chatty, homespun stuff that most Thais would struggle to understand or, indeed want to hear, for we understood one thing very clearly – our main target audience was middle to upper class Thais – not farangs.

For those of you who were around in those days – we were 'FM 107 – Soft and Warm the quiet Storm’ and after the first year of struggle, our business started to boom.

From day one we had a policy of restricting the number of commercial spots per hour (4 breaks of 2 minutes) and we charged a high premium, compared to all the other stations. From memory, at that time the Thai stations would charge around 50 baht for a 30 second spot whereas our rates started at 250 Baht.

At first, nobody wanted to know, but once we had signed up a few high profile clients, such as Thai Airways and Oriental Hotel, the commercial market and advertising agencies started queuing up to get their products and services on our station.

We were literally turning down clients at peak time because we were full up, and we were not prepared to compromise our programme quality by smothering it with commercials.

We built up a huge audience and used to get massive amount of fan mail from as far away as Chon Buri and beyond, and before long virtually every decent hotel in Bangkok carried our station in their hotel room radio systems.

I left the station in late 1983 when I relocated back to the UK and I know that it continued for a few years after that before eventually being taken over by another company, who made a higher bid to the folks who had thentaken power at MCOT.

When I returned to Bangkok in 2001 I tuned in to FM 107, which at that time was still an English language station, but an entirely different format to the one I used to operate. It was apparent that they had very few advertising sponsors and I thought they either had a very rich, philanthropic owner or, sooner or later they would shut down - which of course they did.

Although I had been away from Thailand for a number of years, and it may be that my understanding of the radio market was/is out of date, it seemed to me that the station was aimed at purely a farang audience with all its folksy chatter and I couldn’t imagine that many Thais would be interested in listening. Clearly they weren’t, as was evidenced by the lack of sponsors. And we all know what happened.

Ditto, I’m afraid to say, Wave FM. In my opinion, Wave FM was a huge improvement on the latter day FM 107 and I enjoyed listening to it when I was in Bangkok. The DJ’s were very professional and did their job well, but just who was their target audience?

It seemed to me to be mainly farangs plus a few very fluent English speaking Thais – probably educated overseas. Not exactly a large market for advertisers. I could discern that the number of sponsors was woefully low and I often wondered just how long they could keep going like this. Now I know the answer, yet again.

Contrast ‘Wave FM’ to the current FM 107.

Now I do not like new FM 107 very much, it is too gimmicky, with its trite, supposedly 'cool' jingles and hip young Thai female DJ’s and its mix of mainly Thai speaking with the odd English thrown in for good measure.

But it is a clever format. You can see the market they are attracting – middle and upper class Thais, who like to be ‘modern’ and ‘western’ and who have a reasonable command of English but are not fluent enough to listen to a 100% English Radio.

So this format suits them just fine, as you can tell by the increasing number of sponsors; in a similar way that the old ‘Soft and Warm’ format worked for me back in the early eighties. We never used Thai, (except for a five second segment at the end of each commercial spot to ensure out Thai audience understood the product were advertising), but we kept our English to an acceptably brief level: no ‘personalities’ and no in-jokes and no cliché ridden radio-talk that only farangs would understand. The farangs were happy to have any English language station and loved the music choices, as did the Thais.

There are lessons to be learned here by any budding English language radio broadcasters. This is Thailand, and if you want to attract advertisers, you have to attract a large Thai audience. Work out how to do that and you may be successful.

[DJPaulJackson]

107 The Quiet Storm was the first station I worked on in Thailand ! With Beat, Jom, Lina, Martina etc etc !!

[tpthai2]

Hi Guys

As a Wave FM 88 afternoon drivetime presenter DJ, we were told on Saturday that Monday 31st was our last day. So thats it ! Some of the posts above are correct, selling advertising on English Radio is hard at the best of times. After Sars, Airport closures, Bird Flu, Red shirts and now floods the owners have given up basically.

As a radio dj here since the mid 80's on 95.5 FMX then Virgin Smooth 105 and for the past 4 years Wave FM 88 it is very frustrating when this happens . Not sure if there will ever be another. Most radio station bosses go for the easy sell formats and being in English is not on their list.

Lets see !!

Paul Jackson

Hi Paul, I have enjoyed your programme and your station and am sorry to see its demise, although, as you will see below, I am not particularly surprised.

I don't know how long you have been around in Thailand, but some of you old hands out there may recall the mid to late seventies when there were a couple of English radio stations, (I think FM 105 was one from memory), that were shut down by the military government, as at that time it was illegal to broadcast anything in a foreign language.

Incidentally, Jim Davidson and another legendary DJ, John Dienne, were the English stalwarts of those long ago radio days.

Then in around 1979, FM 107 English Language radio was launched and I was the first General Manager of that station, which was based in Siam Square.

To cut a long story short, all the programmes we put out (24/7) we pre-recorded at our Siam Square studios but were broadcast to sound as though they were live, including, believe it or not, giving very accurate time checks throughout the programmes.

We were encouraged to do this by our ‘sponsor’ in what was then then MOT (later to become MCOT) who fought off all comers to keep our station on the air and claimed that as the broadcasts were not ‘live’ they didn’t break the foreign language broadcasting laws.

In the early days it was a huge struggle; we had no sponsors and very little investment, but over the months, we attracted some investors (at very punitive interest rates, I might add) and as part of the deal with MOT, we purchased and imported a brand new FM transmitter from the USA, which, I imagine, is still is still being used today.

The first year was a nightmare; not only did we find it hard to attract sponsors, but both the Thai Press and one of the major English language newspapers seemed determined to get us shut down. They claimed we were operating illegally, but at the heart of all their opposition was the fact that we had something that they wanted. They were jealous – pure and simple.

There was barely a day went by when there wasn’t yet another attack on our station and further calls to shut us down. I fully expected to be off the air at any moment and quite possibly, kicking my heels in a jail cell.

Our radio format was modern (for those times) and simple. We had play lists (which were quite rare in those days) which was a mix of tuneful pop music, light jazz, a few oldies, a bit of main stream rock and so on.

The DJ’s were only allowed to play music on the play list, which was frequently updated as new albums and singles became available to us . It was a kind of cool, ‘Southern California’ type of format and our DJ’s were encouraged to keep the banter to a minimum and talk briefly over the non-stop music.

No chatty, homespun stuff that most Thais would struggle to understand or, indeed want to hear, for we understood one thing very clearly – our main target audience was middle to upper class Thais – not farangs.

For those of you who were around in those days – we were 'FM 107 – Soft and Warm the quiet Storm’ and after the first year of struggle, our business started to boom.

From day one we had a policy of restricting the number of commercial spots per hour (4 breaks of 2 minutes) and we charged a high premium, compared to all the other stations. From memory, at that time the Thai stations would charge around 50 baht for a 30 second spot whereas our rates started at 250 Baht.

At first, nobody wanted to know, but once we had signed up a few high profile clients, such as Thai Airways and Oriental Hotel, the commercial market and advertising agencies started queuing up to get their products and services on our station.

We were literally turning down clients at peak time because we were full up, and we were not prepared to compromise our programme quality by smothering it with commercials.

We built up a huge audience and used to get massive amount of fan mail from as far away as Chon Buri and beyond, and before long virtually every decent hotel in Bangkok carried our station in their hotel room radio systems.

I left the station in late 1983 when I relocated back to the UK and I know that it continued for a few years after that before eventually being taken over by another company, who made a higher bid to the folks who had thentaken power at MCOT.

When I returned to Bangkok in 2001 I tuned in to FM 107, which at that time was still an English language station, but an entirely different format to the one I used to operate. It was apparent that they had very few advertising sponsors and I thought they either had a very rich, philanthropic owner or, sooner or later they would shut down - which of course they did.

Although I had been away from Thailand for a number of years, and it may be that my understanding of the radio market was/is out of date, it seemed to me that the station was aimed at purely a farang audience with all its folksy chatter and I couldn’t imagine that many Thais would be interested in listening. Clearly they weren’t, as was evidenced by the lack of sponsors. And we all know what happened.

Ditto, I’m afraid to say, Wave FM. In my opinion, Wave FM was a huge improvement on the latter day FM 107 and I enjoyed listening to it when I was in Bangkok. The DJ’s were very professional and did their job well, but just who was their target audience?

It seemed to me to be mainly farangs plus a few very fluent English speaking Thais – probably educated overseas. Not exactly a large market for advertisers. I could discern that the number of sponsors was woefully low and I often wondered just how long they could keep going like this. Now I know the answer, yet again.

Contrast ‘Wave FM’ to the current FM 107.

Now I do not like new FM 107 very much, it is too gimmicky, with its trite, supposedly 'cool' jingles and hip young Thai female DJ’s and its mix of mainly Thai speaking with the odd English thrown in for good measure.

But it is a clever format. You can see the market they are attracting – middle and upper class Thais, who like to be ‘modern’ and ‘western’ and who have a reasonable command of English but are not fluent enough to listen to a 100% English Radio.

So this format suits them just fine, as you can tell by the increasing number of sponsors; in a similar way that the old ‘Soft and Warm’ format worked for me back in the early eighties. We never used Thai, (except for a five second segment at the end of each commercial spot to ensure out Thai audience understood the product were advertising), but we kept our English to an acceptably brief level: no ‘personalities’ and no in-jokes and no cliché ridden radio-talk that only farangs would understand. The farangs were happy to have any English language station and loved the music choices, as did the Thais.

There are lessons to be learned here by any budding English language radio broadcasters. This is Thailand, and if you want to attract advertisers, you have to attract a large Thai audience. Work out how to do that and you may be successful.

I greatly appreciated you comments and they are, in my estimation, accurate. Wave FM 88 made several strategic market miss-calculations with the most important being, as you mentioned, the target audience. If your listening audience does not comprise 90%+ Thai listenership you will simply not have the numbers, = (ratings) to sustain market share. Market share=revenue.

In every developed radio market in the world the numbers are the numbers. You can not spin the numbers, form will not take precedence over hard numbers. Secondly, Wave was improperly micro-managed, top down into insolvency.

Edited November 2, 2011 by tpthai2

[Mobi]

107 The Quiet Storm was the first station I worked on in Thailand ! With Beat, Jom, Lina, Martina etc etc !!

I thought your name rung a bell although I cant place your face. I left in sept 1983, when did you start working there? I knew most if not all the djs.

[DJPaulJackson]

It was around that time. 1983 weekends first then daily later on

[TommyDee]

I am part owner of Pattaya 105FM and knowing the economics and challenges can only empathise with these guys and their staff. here's hoping they get rebranded or taken over and re-launched. English speaking radio is still a vital source of info and tunes for "farangs". I would imagine the current floods and their impact have taken up a lot of the interest of foreigners, Local radio can easily become the best source of info in times of crisis.

Equally i am quite amazed at the costs we, from time to time, endure to keep "on air". It way more than most, including me, ever imagine

all the best

tommy

[FarangKenStine]

RIP Wave 88