This week, we start our column with tips from one of Zambia’s proficient and illustrious radio broadcasters. Read on!

TWELVE days before the January 20, 2015 Presidential election, I anchored two sets of programmes for the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ).
The first was dubbed “The ECZ Advocacy Programme for the 2015 Presidential Elections. It was a 10 topic programme that discussed issues such as the ECZ and its role in elections, the 2015 Presidential Elections and ensuring Violence-Free Elections.
Other topics included Voter Cards Replacements, Voter Eligibility and Participation, Transparency and Vote Counting, Understanding Electoral Code of Conduct, Offences and Penalties and the Role of the Media in Elections.
The other eleven set of programmes was entitled “Know Your Candidate”, in which we featured all contending Presidential candidates who had successfully filed in presidential nominations.
As a broadcast journalist, I have conducted many hours of interviews on radio. I have also listened to radio interviews on local and international radio.
Because of the many broadcast hours I have spent in a radio studio or on site, I have come to a conclusion that preparation and conducting of a radio interview is harder than having a television or “live” interview done.
This is because radio is “sound”, a fact that leaves the listener to solely imagine two people speaking to each other.
I want to believe that a radio interview is an art and not science. There are no prescribed steps. It is a question of listening to how experienced professional broadcasters in other radio stations do it and then developing your own style over time.
There are a few tips that have consistently worked well for me from a media professional’s point of view and I would want to share these with up-coming broadcasters.
Top on the list is knowing the purpose of the interview and researching on the subject matter no matter how small.
At the start of the interview, I always consider it worth good practice to begin with a question that focusses on the person and not the topic as was the case on the ECZ “Know Your Candidate Programme” such as, “What is your brief background.”
The idea is to relax the interviewee and to humanize the interaction. In most cases when a relaxed atmosphere is created, the interview starts on safe ground.
As the interview progresses, I have always tried to communicate with total enthusiasm and involvement, maintaining constant eye contact and not cutting the interviewee off. However, I have not let the interviewee drone on forever about the same thing.
Lastly, I do not hesitate to disagree if I think the interviewee is putting out some wrong information during the interview, but I try to do it in a third person way. Something like, “I read it in the Times of Zambia that so and so said that”. I don’t tell the person they are wrong.
If the interviewee starts to answer my questions saying “Yes indeed….but one more important question I feel I should address is…. Or “that is an interesting question and it raises another…..” and proceeds to ask himself a question he or she wants to answer, I become vigilant and the best is to keep going back to the issues I want to explore, politely but firmly until I get a real answer.

. Kangwa

Ben Kangwa is a Broadcast Journalist and Media Consultant
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TRAFFIC WATCH
THE trend by some radio presenters to rap even when presenting serious programmes is unprofessional.
It is wrong for radio broadcasters to RAP the Traffic Watch updates because that segment is different from mixing and playing music.
We have heard most radio presenters go on with the same tempo like rapping while giving Traffic Watch updates.
Traffic Watch updates like, ‘Weather updates and Banks’ exchange rates update are programmes of serious nature that ought to be presented in a natural mood.
NATIONAL MOURNING
There has been  improvements in the way radio stations observe periods of national mourning, now, they go ahead to give enough details of the deceased’s account.
Unlike in the past, when radio stations only played solemn music with interval announcements that the day was observing period of mourning, listeners are given descriptions of an individual being mourned.
Sadly, however, some radio stations completely ignore such periods and continue with music and programmes of entertainment nature.
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Upon being elected and sworn-in as Republican President, Mr Edgar Lungu immediately became President, and NOT PRESIDENT-ELECT as some radio news bulletins read.
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If newly-elected President Edgar Lungu dissolved Cabinet, then ministers ceased to hold their portfolios, therefore, it was wrong for some radio news bulletins to have kept referring to them as such.
We heard news bulletins between Sunday, January 25, and Monday January, 26 morning referring to some ministers by their portfolios.
SUN FM
Listeners will be forgiven to think they tuned to a foreign radio station when BARRY plays his unique music on SUN FM every Thursdays at 20:00 hours.
We hear Barry, one of those born and lived in Ndola now domiciled in the Western World, packages his music from abroad and plays it by internet for the Zambian fans.
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Some listeners have expressed concern about Proffessor Kasonde Bowa’s candid language on his Saturday morning live health programmes.
RK wrote; “Mr Radio Review Columnist, is it feasible for a radio station to attain anticipated effect or result from rating of a programme, 18 years and above?
This is in reference to a medical programme on Sun FM radio tailored for listeners above 18 years old. My argument is that most of our children of this technology upswing era have personal phones on which they tune through.
As such, it is impossible for anyone to control or tame their listening preferences on their phones.”
*THE BEST TIMING FOR ANY PROGRAMME IN WHERE BLUNT LANGUAGE CAN BE USED IS LATE IN THE NIGHT.
A PROGRAMME LIKE ‘HEALTH MATTERS’, IS, HOWEVER, DEEMED TO BENEFIT EVEN THE VERY YOUNG PEOPLE, AS SUCH, IT HAS TO BE BROADCAST DURING THE DAY.
WE FEEL DILUTING MEDICAL LANGUAGE SAY LIKE; “BIRTH CANAL OR BODY ORGANS” INTEAD OF APPROPRIATE NOUNS MIGHT DISTORT THE MESSAGE.
ZNBC
Marrian Chigwedere, known to most radio fans as Lady MC, is the reigning best female DJ and proves it each time she takes to the airwaves on Radio 4
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You say it is wrong for broadcasters to mispronounce names and places, then, it is even worse to mispronounce names of prominent personalities. As we heard during one Bemba programme where Police Inspector General Stella Libongani’s name was mispronounced as Libobo?
PHOENIX
Whether Karen Nakawala has changed her sig tune for her Sunday Mellow Madness presentation from Jim Reeves’ ‘Welcome to my World’, to Alan Jackson’s ‘Gone Country, the later is just as good.
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Clive was on Radio Phoenix last Thursday night when six callers in succession requested for replay of Willz’s Toliwe song in which she features Wezi, such is the demand for airplay when a song is well packaged.
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While reading ‘What the Papers Say’, live on radio last Wednesday, Roxy fidgeted to find the business page, listeners could hear her flapping pages, they surely is a way of avoiding that.
Stay tuned, don’t touch that dial! – jackmwewa@gmail.com  0955115777