The profressionalism of the on air staff at RAM FM really shone through when it came to its news team. Now those who listened to the bulletins either loved or hated it. Both "sides" said that the news was biased towards the other side, so I guess they were doing something right.
Middle East Eye Witness News (taken from the South African model) hit the airwaves on Dec 1st 2006, whilst RAM FM was testing. There were three bulletins a day, at 9am,1pm and 4pm, presented by the News Manager Andrew Bolton and News Editor Mark Klusener. They were five minute broadcasts, including local and international news, weather, and the price of a barrel of oil, gold, and the dollar rate.
At 6am on February 21st, Andrew Bolton opened the official broadcasting of RAM FM with the first news of the day. From that day on, news was broadcast 13 hours a day - from 6am-7pm. During the breakfast and drive time shows, news was broadcast on the half hour as well.
The news team were split up between the Jerusalem and Ramallah offices to maintain a fine balance of news coverage. The news was usually broadcast from Jerusalem in the mornings 6am-12pm) and from Ramallah in the afternoons (1pm-7pm) - although the listener had no idea that this was happening.
In all my years in radio, either on air or reporting about it, I must say I have never met anyone so professional as Andrew Bolton. He was utterly dedicated to the news dept. and made sure that everything ran smoothly. He was often very critical about his own news broadcasts, and I witnessed a few incidents when he got angry with himself when things didn't go exactly as he had wished them to go - such is the man!
Although Andrew is a very modest man, he was not a one man show, and had a very dedicated professional team behind him. In Jerusalem there was Ashira, Tyson, and later on Ami and Heather. In Ramallah there was News Editor (and later News Manager) Mark klusener, Abdullah and Shireen.
When the Jerusalem studios were raided by the police, most of the news dept moved to Ramallah, but Heather and Ami remained in Jerusalem to keep me company - the only RAM FM staff that remained in Israel.
To end of course, we must not forget the news jingles before and after the bulletins that became their trade mark - In touch, in tune and independent, 93.6 RAM FM ......
Middle East Eye Witness News was a big part of RAM FM, which had many scoops and three of the seven staff arrested on that fatal day in April were MEEWN journalists .....
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