Profiles

Chris Turpin — Adventures of a Radio Trainer

From a 1999 Internews newsletter

Internews In the Croat-controlled part of Bosnia, Ivana Cobanac, Igor Valenta, and Perica Dujmovie run a radio station which promotes ethnic tolerance.

(March 1998) In the past year, radio journalist Chris Turpin has provided journalism training for Internews at radio stations in Bosnia, Armenia, the Kyrghyz Republic, Uzbekistan, and Indonesia. Before joining Internews, Turpin spent six years as a journalist at Monitor Radio. He contributed the following account.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA  (MARCH 1998)

“Let’s hear a revving engine, then the car screeches to a halt.”

At Radio Fenix, in the divided Bosnian city of Novi Travnik, the marketing department—which as in most Bosnian stations is also the programming, engineering and everything else department—is hard at work. 

The challenge: to produce an advertisement for a local driving school. Pretty nearly the first ad this impoverished station has ever had. Fifty deutschmarks to spend on CDs to supplement the station’s meager collection. Or at least keep the chain-smoking volunteers in cigarettes for the next twenty minutes or so.

“How about ‘we’ll teach you to drive fast like a professional racing driver,’” suggests Perica, the station manager. Naively I suggest that focusing on safety might be more appropriate for a driving school. 
“Oh no,” comes the disdainful reply, “Not in Bosnia. If we did that he’d be bankrupt in a week. Everyone wants to drive fast!”

Minutes later I’m sitting, white as a sheet, in the back of Perica’s battered car. He revs the engine, accelerates and then slams his foot on the brake. The result is a prolonged tire-burning skid. 

All the while, his colleague Igor leans three quarters out of the window recording this home-made sound effect. Unfortunately, the first ten or so takes come back distorted.

Finally, fearing the next try might be our last, I let them in on the secret—set the recording levels properly by revving the engine before roaring off.

In the week I’m at Fenix this is pretty nearly the only time I get one over on the staff. Sponsored by a Croatian Catholic charity, this station has no money, poor equipment and rudimentary programming. But in post-war Bosnia it has something more important—tolerance.

One day we design and broadcast ads recruiting new staff, emphasizing that the station is open to all ethnic groups, not just Croats. Two Muslim teenagers, Mario and Edin, turn up. 

A few days later Mario receives a threatening phone call telling him not to visit the station again. Undaunted, he still arrives for his air-shift. Extraordinary people, living in extraordinary times.

By the way, Internews bought the station a sound effects CD. After surviving a war, no one should have to risk death taping an ad for a driving school.

CENTRAL ASIA  (APRIL-MAY 1998)

My translator in Bishkek, the capital of the Kyrghyz Republic, called in sick at the last minute. After a few frantic phone calls we found a replacement. There was just one problem. He didn’t speak English.
Inevitably, my morning at one of Bishkek’s bigger radio stations dissolved into a blur of ‘Monty Pythonesque’ misunderstandings. 

My eloquent, or so I thought, dissertation on programming for target audiences left the Program Director scratching his head. Eventually I was reduced to sign language, of the “Me Tarzan, you Jane” variety. A brutal reminder that linguistically inept radio trainers are only as good as their translators.

Translators are the unsung heroes of training—a good one is a travel guide, a cultural advisor and a confidant. In Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, my translator was a delightful Russian woman, who had converted to Eastern mysticism. So devoted was she to her guru, she told me, that she’d even given up vodka. 

At Radio Grande in Tashkent, I asked the staff what kind of training they would like. The response: “Teach us how to be Howard Stern.” Apparently pirated copies of “Private Parts’” were the hot ticket there. Preaching the gospel of news radio isn’t always easy.

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