KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

It was a night of laugh­ter, nos­tal­gia and trib­ute as 95 The Ul­ti­mate One marked its 50th an­niver­sary, cel­e­brat­ing a lega­cy that has car­ried T&T through the shift from tra­di­tion­al ra­dio to a fast-evolv­ing dig­i­tal age at Wood­ford Café, Ch­agua­nas, on Sat­ur­day night.

Past and present an­nounc­ers, staff and man­agers gath­ered to re­flect on the sta­tion’s jour­ney. Some grew emo­tion­al as they shared sto­ries of their time on air and the bond built with lis­ten­ers across the coun­try. Be­yond the cel­e­bra­tion, there was a shared com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing that con­nec­tion while push­ing the brand for­ward for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. When the for­mal­i­ties end­ed, the crowd took to the floor, danc­ing deep in­to the night.

Guardian Me­dia’s Head of Com­mer­cial Part­ner­ships, To­va Sat­nar­ine-White, said the mile­stone was root­ed in peo­ple rather than tech­nol­o­gy.

“Brands like this, they do not just last on trans­mit­ters and fre­quen­cies, they last based on the trust, the re­la­tion­ships, the voic­es and the qui­et­ly con­sis­tent, com­mit­ted peo­ple like Val and Dani, Dana, Bran­don, Richard, show­ing up every sin­gle day to make it mean­ing­ful,” Sat­nar­ine-White said.

She said the sta­tion’s mu­sic has long been the sound­track to lis­ten­ers’ lives.

“I am pret­ty sure that when you think of the mu­sic of 95.1 FM, you go back a lit­tle bit and know that it took you through young love, heart­break and hap­pi­ly ever af­ter. That is 95.1”

Sat­nar­ine-White added that the brand con­tin­ues to res­onate across gen­er­a­tions, adding the fo­cus re­mains on in­no­vat­ing with­out los­ing iden­ti­ty, even as the in­dus­try em­braces ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

Guardian Me­dia chair­man Pe­ter Clarke al­so paid trib­ute to those who built the brand, not­ing its con­tin­ued role in con­nect­ing with au­di­ences lo­cal­ly and abroad. He said the com­pa­ny re­mains com­mit­ted to in­vest­ing in mod­ern stu­dios, tech­nol­o­gy and tal­ent to en­sure its rel­e­vance for decades to come.

Open­ing the pro­ceed­ings, Morn­ing Re­set hosts Val­star and DJ Dani re­flect­ed on their years be­hind the mi­cro­phone and the de­mands of ear­ly-morn­ing ra­dio.

“Al­ways sleep-de­prived. Al­ways. It has been eight and a half years, and I still have not got­ten the hang of not be­ing sleep-de­prived, but I love morn­ings,” Parkin­son said. “95.1 has un­doubt­ed­ly made me a morn­ing per­son,” Dani said, de­scrib­ing the show as a space for cre­ativ­i­ty and con­nec­tion.

“It is my cre­ativ­i­ty to chase every rab­bit hole and re­al­ly con­nect with the lis­ten­ers, from con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries to life lessons. Con­nect­ing in the morn­ing is what re­al­ly makes this worth be­ing sleep-de­prived.”

Dani said the trust placed in the team by lis­ten­ers is a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty she takes se­ri­ous­ly, not­ing that some tune in and send mes­sages even be­fore the hosts reach the stu­dio. De­spite the sta­tion’s evo­lu­tion and re­brand­ing over the years, she said its essence has re­mained in­tact.

As the mu­sic swelled and voic­es blend­ed in­to the night, the cel­e­bra­tion be­came more than a mile­stone. It was a re­minder of a sta­tion that has grown with its au­di­ence, sound­track­ing gen­er­a­tions while hold­ing firm to the con­nec­tions that made it a house­hold name.