“Talk radio is getting really big, because the focus is the stories that DJs can tell.”

DJ “TINO” FAUSTINO 99.5 PLAY FM All his life, people told him he should be on the radio because he spoke good English and his name was already “DJ” KATZ SALAO 99.5 PLAY FM Didn’t really know what she wanted in life, so she told everyone she was gonna be M

there’s also still that market who doesn’t wanna listen to those DJs who only have their stories to tell, and they just wanna listen to music. But that’s why I think radio is shifting in that direction. That’s why we have podcasts, that’s why we have conversational radio, that’s why we have talk radio. That’s where it’s going.

J: I think it’s because we’re all really lonely, and we really like to pretend there are people we know are interesting again.

K: Sometimes, I think it’s gonna stay because people like being greeted on air. I mean, they just like being acknowledged and made special.

T: They see a news camera on the street, and they’re always like, “Hi mom!” You just want to see yourself there. “Mom, I’m on TV!”

K: Yeah, as simple as, “Hey to the Uber driver!” You light up their day. I think that’s my favorite part of being on the radio. I have that power, and also, I wanna do it a lot, it’s not costing me a lot, but the returns are so great.

D: And extra brownie points from your crushes when you greet your crush on the radio.

K: We’ve been trying to greet Liza Soberano for the longest time.

T: Yeah, we try to greet her every other week. Just in case she listens one day. J: We tried a thing, a retweet kind of thing, and it got over 500 retweets and she still hasn’t noticed us. I wanna ask you guys what you feel is the edge your generation of DJs have. What do you bring to the table? K: Whaaaat. I gotta go... (laughs) J: I think in terms of our market, we can probably relate to them more because we are our own market. So in terms of relatability, in terms of things you’re interested in, in terms of content and passions and things you care about, the series you watch, how often you’ve been on Twitter the past 20 minutes, it’s very, very similar to the people who are already listening to you.

I feel like the turnover of topics, maybe it’s not because of our generation, but because of the various types of technology available to the people of our age. Our turnover of news, of topics, [is] quicker, plus at the same time, you can probably verify that story much quicker. You never have to talk about a rumor on air. Well, almost. You can usually verify.

Maybe to help answer your question, are there any problems in the industry that you guys feel your generation is best equipped to deal with?

S: Yeah, to take off from that point, this generation is more in tune with the idea of a personal brand. And when you say personal brand, it’s how you carry yourself not just outside, but online. And to give an example, most, if not all of us here are pretty vocal online about what we like, what we don’t like, our experiences, politics in particular, given the climate in our country right now, and it’s become really empowering for me to see, say, the likes of you guys, my friends, speaking out about this because it gives me the freedom to stray away from what I’ve been taught, which is you don’t tell anyone about your political views. You don’t tell anyone about what you really feel about something because you’re a public gure.

I think that’s changing. We live in a time where whether or not you’re a public gure is no longer important; if you have a platform to say something, you go ahead and say it. Because you’re a public gure, you have in uence, you have reach, and to a certain extent, you have clout. And if you don’t use that clout properly, you’re not really using it at all. I think that’s something the older generation is only coming to terms with. Either that, or they fail to understand that. And that, to me, is really disappointing, because they don’t realize the power they have at their disposal.

R: Actually, I disagree with that. I think they really utilize the power of radio to in ict change upon their generation. I mean, we had like Radyo Veritas, we had everything [back then]...