Joanne Brig­gs

The gen­er­al view is ra­dio in the Caribbean is dead. What start­ed as a his­to­ry of lis­ten­ing to hourly BBC news re­ports (which of­ten served as alarm clocks for many), to hear­ing well-ar­tic­u­lat­ed Caribbean voic­es an­nounc­ing com­mu­ni­ty seg­ments or host­ing dis­course on na­tion­al is­sues has now been rav­aged by row­dy DJs, ac­com­pa­nied by rau­cous pop­u­lar mu­sic.

Many be­long­ing to the era of Red­if­fu­sion or the AM band be­lieved that ra­dio had a par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion un­like now. But for Ju­lian Rogers, ra­dio is not dead. What mat­ters more is qual­i­ty.

Rogers, who made his name in Trinidad as a prob­ing yet en­dear­ing talk-show host for the ear­ly-morn­ing cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme, TV6's Morn­ing Edi­tion, is Bar­ba­di­an by birth. Dur­ing his stay here, back in 1998, then prime min­is­ter Bas­deo re­fused to re­new his work per­mit. On his re­turn in 2005, he was con­tent man­ag­er and head of news for the re­brand­ed state-TV/ra­dio, now known as CN­MG (Caribbean New Me­dia Group).

Now liv­ing in An­tigua, Rogers has ful­filled his dream to open his own ra­dio sta­tion–Rogers Ra­dio Caribbean. The fact that he is head­ing in­to an en­vi­ron­ment that al­ready has 20 ra­dio sta­tions is not a daunt­ing one for him.

"I don't see any threat in any re­al terms...What the au­di­ence ex­pects or de­mands is a qual­i­ty prod­uct. May the best man win. Every­body has to find a way to sur­vive," he said.

With 50 years in the me­dia, ad­ver­tis­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions, Rogers' dream has al­ways been to run his own ra­dio sta­tion. Set­ting it up was dic­tat­ed by the abil­i­ty to raise mon­ey to fund it.

"I was look­ing at the mar­ket and where to set up," he said. He ap­plied for a ra­dio li­cence in 2005 when he re­turned to Bar­ba­dos. Not too long af­ter, he re­turned to Trinidad to de­vel­op the CN­MG brand. In 2009, he moved to An­tigua, re­turn­ing to Ob­serv­er Ra­dio (where he worked in 2001 as gen­er­al man­ag­er) un­til 2012.

"Af­ter that, I was not sure what I was go­ing to do next. Six to eight months lat­er, set­ting up a ra­dio sta­tion was where I want­ed to be," he said.

Un­der­stand­ing the mi­lieu in which ra­dio works now, he us­es the tech­nol­o­gy to his ben­e­fit. "You can do work in­side a build­ing, or out­side a build­ing. There is a lot of flex­i­bil­i­ty," he ex­plained. "I have a stu­dio with a sup­port­ing news­room set up. I am al­so plan­ning a TV sta­tion."

At CN­MG, he of­ten used the phrase "con­verged news­room." He en­cour­aged a syn­er­gy be­tween the TV and ra­dio sta­tions, with the hope that the team of re­porters would un­der­stand that they could be flex­i­ble in any medi­um, pro­vid­ing what he called re­al news in re­al time. In An­tigua, his phi­los­o­phy re­mains the same.

"We have no choice to con­verge. This does not on­ly ap­ply to the jour­nal­ist. The jour­nal­ist we are look­ing for must pos­sess mul­ti­ple skills. Even spe­cial­ists must have skills. It's a one-man cre­ative force to pro­duce. This ap­plies to the sta­tion. The younger the jour­nal­ist, the more com­fort­able they are with the tech­nol­o­gy," he said.

Two months af­ter the ra­dio sta­tion was launched, the news­room is sched­uled to be up and run­ning in Jan­u­ary. The staff com­pris­es eight mem­bers so far, in­clud­ing one se­nior newsper­son, An­tiguan Omega Can­dy.

While he has al­ways main­tained a talk fo­rum, Rogers' ex­pe­ri­enced for­mat is to use mu­sic to at­tract lis­ten­ers. Al­though he is a jazz en­thu­si­ast, he says he has not added much of his favoured genre to the mu­sic list. In­stead, he match­es the mu­sic as best he could, to pro­vide as much his­tor­i­cal con­text. Steel­pan, ca­lyp­so–a lit­tle Stal­in in­clud­ed–cre­ate a rel­e­vance of mem­o­ries.

"The 25-plus want to know what is hap­pen­ing. So I am pro­vid­ing en­ter­tain­ment and keep­ing them in­formed about what's hap­pen­ing around them," he said.

The set­ting up of Rogers Ra­dio Caribbean is one of two mile­stones for the vet­er­an jour­nal­ist in 2014. In June, as part of the roy­al birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, Queen Eliz­a­beth II ap­point­ed Rogers as a Mem­ber of the Most Ex­cel­lent Or­der of the British Em­pire (MBE) for ser­vices to Broad­cast­ing.

He ac­knowl­edges the val­ue of the peo­ple who guid­ed him on his ca­reer path–his head­mas­ter who read at the front of the class, talk­ing about what was hap­pen­ing in the news; his fa­ther who lis­tened to ra­dio news; his en­trance in­to the world of work at age 16 when he joined the Bar­ba­dos Red­if­fu­sion Ser­vice as a scriptwriter but end­ed up pro­duc­ing ra­dio news; then lat­er, he was pro­duc­er of a night­ly 9 o'clock news­cast which in­volved cap­tur­ing in­ter­na­tion­al news, rewrit­ing notes and of­ten ad-lib­bing on air; copy­writer for the ad agency Corbin Comp­ton.

It was on­ly when Rogers col­lect­ed the award from Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al Sir El­liott Bel­grave in Bar­ba­dos on No­vem­ber 14 that it re­al­ly hit home that he was get­ting this ho­n­our.

"It's not some­thing that hap­pens every day. It gives a mo­ment of pause. I was just plain hap­py, pleased as punch. 50 years in the biz? Hey!" he said.