A Different Tune on Air

by Vanessa Velasco

(published in the October 2005 issue of Enterprise Magazine)

A surge of musical genres has hit the airwaves – radio stations have tried to find their niche to capture a particular audience. In surfing the channels, one will come across the usual beat of drums and reverberation of electric guitars that is commonly used in the various genres – until you hit that station when the music is distinctively different. One of violins and cellos and flutes.

These finer and softer sounds will go by unnoticed to the untrained ear. Only those who have an appreciation for the finer art will keep their dials tuned in to the station. For more than half a century, 98.7 DZFE has been dutifully, without fanfare, playing the classics in the airwaves. Amid the proliferation of the more popular tunes of pop and rock, the station maintained its identity as the only classical music station in the country.

The station has long served an important role in the classical music scene. When people cannot attend concerts or buy CDs, DZFE brings classical music right to their own homes, offices, or cars. One can enjoy the “natural imagery” in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or imagine the countryside charm in Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, while negotiating across Metro Manila’s traffic. The stress of office work becomes bearable when listening to the soothing symphonies of Beethoven or Mozart or Rachmaninoff. People can listen to performances of artists in the concert halls of Europe without leaving the comfort of their homes or the privacy of their cars.

While most of the station’s listeners are top executives, professionals, and the academe, there are, surprisingly enough, also a number of cab drivers, motorshop mechanics, and sari-sari store owners who listen. This defies the perception that classical music is only for the elite. Even the common tao can develop a taste for the fine and the elegant.

One of them wrote to the station, giving a glimpse into the very diverse audience of DZFE: “I grew up in the dumpsites, in the squatters’ area. I began listening to your station when you were on the AM band when I was in sixth grade. Only the music of the masters helped me keep everything in balance. My neighbors were wondering what this music was that I was listening to! I just love your station.”

Reading these responses from the listeners is enough to motivate the people in DZFE to continue their work despite the difficulties. Like all non-profit organizations, the station faces financial challenges that started with funding problems in the later part of the year 2000. Fund generation was at a downhill trend, compelling DZFE to reduce broadcast hours by 40 percent. Tiffany Joy Liong, DZFE station manager, assures listeners, however, that the cut in broadcast hours is temporary. Once the funds come in regularly, the station will resume its afternoon and weekend programs.

The station needs to raise more than P400,000 a month to cover operational expenses. Because of its non-commercial license, DZFE does not solicit advertisements from organizations; they survive only through the donations of radio listeners and other partner organizations who have offered to help the station financially.

The station has also partnered with corporations through sponsorships of fundraising concerts. But while these donations help in pushing forward DZFE’s projects, the station has yet to get regular funding to sustain broadcast operations.

To date, DZFE’s mother network, the Far East Broadcasting Company, still subsidizes a portion of the station’s operational costs, but other funding revenues are being explored with the goal of establishing a donor base that can regularly support the station. “We need to get regular donations, even if it is as little as P100 a month,” Tiffany says. “As long as it is continuing, it would help us continue our broadcasts.”

Many sectors believe the broadcasts should indeed continue, pointing to DZFE’s programming that does not compete for the passing interest of the majority, but remains faithful to what is timeless. DZFE represents the artist’s resistance to what is merely popular, so that it remains faithful to its advocacy to promote what is excellent, and thus elevate its audience’s taste.

Better still, it is the kind of programming that makes people experience what this listener articulated: “In moments like these, when I feel the world is bearing down on me, and when it has become so difficult to live life peacefully, I tune in to your station.

“It is always like a breath of fresh air that has come into my troubled soul. It is not just the tranquil music from our classic composers, but the quiet, almost prayerful quality of your programming that gives me a certain calm. For these precious moments of tranquility in a world of noise, I am grateful.”