The Afternoon Show - Mike And Arda

Taken from the RAM FM Internet site that showed the on air presenter at a certain time.







After Hayat Alami went to work in Ramallah, I presented the Afternoon Show alone for a week or so. At the end of September/beginning of October Arda Aghazarian joined me instead of Hayat. The Afternoon Show became known as the Afternoon Show with Mike and Arda.

Some minor changes were made, like the Lunchbreak (between 12-1pm) became a competition, and listeners had to guess what year we were playing the songs from, along with clues that we were giving every 10 minutes or so.

As I said last time, the 12-3pm spot is not one of the best daytimes spots to have on radio, and at first we were told to only ask people to e-mail us the answers. The response was low - only 4-6 e-mails per day. Then one day the computer was down, and we got permission to tell people to call. Again the response was only marginally better - about 10 calls per day. We were told not to worry, the more the people hear about the show, calls will grow.

This is exactly what happened, and by the time the raid happened, we were getting between 20-50 calls in the Lunchbreak hour. We had a golden rule at RAM FM, whoever won a competition, couldn't enter again for 30 days - to give others a chance of winning. But this didn't deter our faithful listeners - and we had many. People just called us for the fun of it, they said, "I know I cannot win, but the answer is ......"

The show was getting bigger everyday, and more and more people were calling and e-mailing us outside of the competition hour. We continued to have the magazine format, and each day Arda and I concentrated on a different theme. We began interviewing experts here and there instead of talking about the subjects ourselves, and listeners who were experts at what we were talking about, called or wrote in giving their knowledge.

Everything was perfect, it couldn't be better. Our audience, as well as RAM FM's was growing by the day. I heard RAM FM in cars, taxis, bakeries, flower shops and my barber! We were getting e-mails from all over the world. People were listening to us online, so it wasn't afternoon in a lot of places. But they say all good things come to an end, and so they did on April 7th 2008, and fittingly, it was during our show - at about 2.25pm. I won't go into the details of the raid again, I have already written about it in a previous post.

After the raid, Arda went to Ramallah to present the show, but I as an Israeli couldn't go there. Arda continued to present the show alone until RAM FM's closure on August 7th 2008 - exactly four months after the raid.

I think we (Hayat, Arda and myself) proved that it doesn't matter WHAT time a show is broadcast, if it is interesting to the listener, they will listen.

The Afternoon Show - Hayat and Mike

One of the worst spots on daytime radio is the 12.00-15.00 spot. People at work are eating lunch, mothers at home are fetching their children, and then giving them lunch etc. So it is not the best of times to broadcast - so I thought!

The original RAM FM line up had me between 9-12 in the morning, and Hayat Alami between 12.00-15.00. RAM FM's Station Manager, Maysoun Gangat had an idea of pairing a Palestinian (Hayat) and an Israeli (myself) together on one show and talking about everything under the sun - EXCEPT politics!

A show that was a normal magazine show, just presented by an Israeli and a Palestinian, without any who-ha around it. It worked, and well - very well. On September 1st 2007, the first show hit the airwaves. Hayat and myself got on very well together, and the show was a success. At first we had the Lunchbreak - 45 minutes of songs from a certain year. The Lunchbreak was to go on to be competition, but more about that in my next entry.

From 1pm-3pm we had a different theme each day. We would talk about health, hobbies, travel,

numerology, dreams and plenty more.

For reasons I won't go into here, Hayat and I only broadcast a month or so together, and Hayat went to Ramallah to be a producer.

After Hayat, there came Arda, and the Afternoon Show became The Afternoon show with Mike and Arda - coming up next ......

RAM FM - April 7th - August 8th 2008

The empty Jerusalem office - apart from my computer
















From April 7th no broadcasts originated from Jerusalem anymore. Anybody who could, went to our Ramallah studios to broadcast. Whilst we were in house arrest and the week after that, The Afternoon Show was not broadcast. Martin Bee went to Ramallah each morning to do his show, Raf Gangat (Morning Show) and Kevin Lee (Drive) were already in Ramallah.






When we were allowed to return to work, my co-host Arda went to Ramallah everyday to present the Afternoon Show. I went to our Jerusalem office to "produce" the show, and come up with new ideas. I used to come on air through the telephone once or twice during the programme, but after the line was so bad, after a week or so, this was dropped.

So there I was, along with two new members of the news team (Ami and Heather) alone in Jerusalem. RAM FM was more or lessed based in Ramallah from now on. People did come to visit every now and again, but more or less we were alone. I no longer felt part of the station I had been with since its inception.



There was not much anyone could do as far as I was concerned. I am Israeli, I could not go to Ramallah to present the show. Arda was now presenting the show alone, and when it became clear that Jerusalem was not going to open again, my name was taken out of the programmes ID's - that hurt!

After a couple of months we were told that the main offices and studios in Jerusalem were going to be closed altogether, and we were to move into a room in the office next door to us. This also didn't happen, and in the middle of July we were told that with great sorrow, we were being let go. That was it, 18 months was now coming to an end.

During those remaining weeks, all the RAM FM staff were resigned (sorry for the pun!) to the fact that the station was to close, and people started looking for alternatives. The date we were giving was somewhere between September and December 2008, so I was quite surprised when a listener called me on August 8th saying that the station was to close down the same day - we the staff were not even told of the decision! I knew there had been a Board Meeting a day or two before, and we knew it was something serious, but we didn't think the station would close so fast. So fast that even Martin didn't get a chance to say goodbye to his listeners. There were no goodbyes from any of the RAM FM presenters, and only a short announcement repeated throughout the day by Raf Gangat.

At 7pm another short announcement was made by Raf, and 18 months of a wonderful idea, and hundreds of thousands of faithful listeners went down the drain.

The day the music died/the beginning of the end for RAM FM

Before and after the raid. The studio as it normally was, and after the equipment was confiscated.

Monday April 7th 5.30 am. Everything normal, my alarm went off, I got up with a smile becuase I was doing something I loved. What more could I want, I was a presenter on one of Israels most listened to radio stations.

I got to the studios in Jerusalem about 8.30am, and along with Arda, my co-host, we set about, working against the clock, to prepare the days programme. Nothing out of the ordinary, we were preparing, Martin Bee had just finished the Breakfast Show, came out of the studio and greeted us warmly as he always did.

We went on air at 12.05 just after the news. Today's programme was our health day and it was about tea. Everything proceeded as usual, and after the 2pm news I asked the listeners to call or e-mail us to answer my question "When is tea not tea"? I never got the chance to answer it, because at 2.25 we saw that there were a lot of people in the office (we had windows in the studio that faced the office).

During a music break I went out to see what was going on - we often had people come to see the studios etc, so I didn't think anything special was happening. A man in a yellow shirt came up to me and asked me if we had finished talking on air. I thought to myself "Who the heck are you to ask me such a question". I didn't get the chance to answer, when he continued "I am from the Communications Ministry, and these people are police officers. We are closing you down for broadcasting illegally"

To say I was flabergasted was putting it mildly. What? We are broadcasting illegally? No way! You have a mistake! But they were not to be dettered, and they claimed that RAM FM was operating an illegal transmitter inside the State of Israel. I cannot go into more details, because I am still under investigation by the police - 18 months later!!!

Because we had cameras in the studio, our colleagues in Ramallah saw what was going on, and our programme was stopped, and continuous music was played until 3pm. At 3pm Kevin Lee presented his programme as usual from Ramallah as if nothing had happened. The first thing the listeners knew anythinghad happened, was the RAM FM news at 5pm, saying seven staff members were arrested, and the Jerusalem studios closed down.

As one of those arrested, I must say, that we were treated well at all times. The communications Ministry officials dismantled our equipment along with our technician gently. I saw reports that the equipment was torn from the wall - this was not so - the opposite is true. Special boxes were brought to take the equipment away.

We must have waited over an hour for everything to be dismantled, and then we were taken to a Jerusalem police station for questioning. The people arrested were reporters Ashira and Tyson, News Manager Mark Klusner - all journalists with Israeli journalist cards, Arda and myself, Francis our technican and IT guy, and Maysoun, our Station Manager who rushed to the studios as soon as she knew what had happened.

We thought we would be questioned and released, in fact that is what we were told by the Communications Ministry officials. But we weren't, and we were sent to the Russian Compound to spend a night there - not a nice experience by any means.

To cut a long story short, the next day we were released to House Arrest for eight days, where we weren't allowed to be in touch with each other, or anyone else at the station, and only after 14 days were we allowed to go back to work.

In the next post: Isolation in Jerusalem, all of my colleagues went to Ramallah to broadcast.

Pictures - Bus campaign/Happy 1st Birthday RAM FM

Here is a picture of the RAM FM advertising campaign on the buses -March 2008.

A birthday cake for our first birthday

A picture that was above my desk in the office

The golden months / The advertising campaign

Most radio stations have their golden years, but as RAM FM was only on the air for 18 months, I will say that we had our golden "months".

Without much advertising, and most of it going by word of mouth, RAM's popularity spread fast at the end of 2007. A lot of places I went into (flower shops, bakeries etc) were playing RAM FM in the background. I even became a semi-celeb at my barbers, who always had RAM FM on when I came to have a haircut (whether he changed the station when I went, I don't know!).

At the station we could see it by the amount of people who were calling in and e-mailing us. When I changed the Breakfast Show's engineer (Francis) when he went on holiday, I saw there were over 100 calls coming in. Even The Afternoon Show - not one of the most popular spots on daytime radio, was getting close to 50 calls during our Lunchbreak competition between 12.00-13.00.

The word was spreading, and our audience was growing by the day. Then in March of 2008, the station had an advertising campaign that cost between $400,000-$500,000 ( figures taken from the press). All of sudden you could see Bob Marley, The Beatles, Madonna and Kylie Minogue made out of stamps (not the ones you put on letters). "Passports" were distributed in Tel Aviv, and huge posters were hung in Tel Aviv and Ramallah. There was a really nice sign on the Ayalon Freeway going through Tel Aviv. All these brought us new listeners.

The fact we had no advertising brought us listeners from Radius 100 which broadcasts in the Sharon area just outside of Tel Aviv, and has an intolerable amount of commercials every hour.

RAM FM celebrated it's first birthday on Feb 21st 2008 by cancelling all of its regular programmes, and just had dedications all day. During the Afteroon show we had hundreds of phonecalls, and Arda and I had to get help to answer the phones, we just couldn't keep up!

The golden months of February and March was followed by Black April - April 7th, the day the music died in our Jerusalem studios .........

Why weren't there any commercials?

A question I am always asked is why weren't there any commercials on RAM FM - and a good question it is. Well at the beginning there were - four commercials each hour - for Dove, Coca Cola, Western Union and Dallah Rent a Car.

As far as I know, these slots were given either free of charge or for very little money for six months on a trial basis. As we know, none of the above continued to advertise on RAM FM, the reason (to me) not known. In fact nearly very few companies advertised on RAM FM and the question is why?

I can think of a couple of reasons - at least from the Israeli advertisers point of view. RAM FM was a Palestinian radio station. The stations license came from the Palestinian Authority, the transmitters were in Ramallah, as was the head office. I suppose it would be very hard for an Israeli company to advertise on such a station. I do not know the terms of the broadcast license, so I do not know if it was forbidden to receive advertising from Israel or not. I DO know that in the beginning at least, the stations focus was on multi-national companies.

I also heard (and I do not know if this is true or not) that the station wanted equal advertising - meaning the same amount of commercials from Israel as from the P.A. This never happened, so there was no advertising at all. This could have been another reason for the lack of advertising.

Towards the end, we did get sponsorship from Cheerios cereal and from the "Curves" gym, I still remember the boxes of cheerios piled up in the Station Managers office - wonder what happened to them?

The lack of advertising may have been "one" of the reasons leading to the closure of RAM FM in August 2008. I can completely understand the investors when they put out so much money on the station, and didn't get anything back in return.