Broadcaster-lawyer

Idon’t personally know broadcaster-lawyer (I prefer that to lawyer-broadcaster) Juril Patiño. I haven’t as yet bumped into him in any media affair, although I must admit my attending those affairs have become rare in the past few years. But I somehow got to know him from afar through traditional and social media. Traditional media for his voice and social media for his posts and photos.

Despite the increasing hold of the Internet and television on our lives, I still hold a fascination for radio, FM for music and AM for commentary programs. I am therefore familiar with dyMF Bombo Radyo, the popular hard-hitting radio station until it was pushed to the lower ranks apparently because of past mismanagement that had it constantly hiring new anchors because of the exit of the old ones.

I remember first hearing Patiño in dyMF years ago when I surfed radio stations in my monitor. That radio station has a way of making its anchors sound tough even if they probably are soft-spoken without the microphone. The sound of the drum beaten after every line of commentary must have an effect on the anchors’ demeanor. Patiño was among those who trained under the so-called “Bombo Academy” of broadcasting. Many broadcasters in other stations were once under its tutelage.

I didn’t know Patiño studied law then or after his Bombo Radyo stint. But when media workers pass the bar, Cebu media celebrates with them, so I got to know Patiño becoming a lawyer that way. Better information about him came when we became friends on Facebook. I used to notice his FB posts regularly until these were drowned by prolific posters and by my growing number of FB friends.

As I said earlier, I listen to FM station for the music. That’s why I hate the shift in the programming of some FM stations from purely music to one interspersed with talk shows tackling inane issues like the personal problems, mostly about love, of callers. The most recent is news and public affairs networks using FM stations to relay their programming. They are “AM-izing” the FM band.

In our place, I usually do the rounds of the market after bringing my sons to their schools. I think it was last year when I noticed that in an eatery or two and in a small hardware in the market and its environs early in the mornings, the FM program listened to was in commentary format, one in which two anchors constantly sparred. The “Bombo Academy” influence in the anchors’ styles was easily noticeable. The radio station was Brigada FM.

I soon found out that the program anchors were Carlo Dugaduga and Patiño. I know Dugaduga, who used to be the public information officer of former mayor Michael Rama. But before that he was with, yes, Bombo Radyo and later a radio station that would later become the resurrected dyRC. That was when I found out that Patiño, even if he is already a lawyer, has not severed his media links.

When social media was abuzz with the story about an unnamed broadcaster-lawyer accused by a 13-year-old girl of raping her, Patiño was one of those I mentioned to my wife as among Cebu’s broadcaster-lawyers. Last Wednesday, a rape complaint was filed against Patiño by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).