Toronto Filipino Radyo Migrante in its 8th year

By Yshmael Cabana
Toronto-Canada
November 26, 2015



Taking the pulse of migrants, pushing for critical media.

It’s a quarter before one in the afternoon and Lui Queano is getting prepared for his Sunday routine.

While the opening theme song plays, he adjusts the microphone in the radio booth on the York University campus and hits the airwaves.

For one hour, his low baritone voice announces the newscast and the featured interview for the week.

Radyo Migrante is celebrating it's eighth year anniversary in November. In recent years, it is considered a signature program on CHRY, and Queano is its newest volunteer board operator after the show’s temporary hiatus this year.

Playlist for the month include Philippine folk rock and thematic music such as songs about indigenous peoples’ call for their right to their ancestral land.

“Our format carries not only aspects about culture. We don’t shy away from taking in political education and organization. The issues we cover are local community issues as well as international,” Queano says.

As part of its renewed thrust, Queano believes there’s more possibility of “community” in the programming as he gets a good idea out of deliberation with a collective of volunteer co-hosts.

“We share how we view things. We try to be socially relevant to our audience, particularly the migrant workers,” Rhea Gamana shares.

An English major back in her native of Davao, Gamana has earned her designation as producer in the station three years ago. She now works on a handful of correspondences to prospective resource persons for the following episodes.

“Pulso ng Migrante“ (Migrant’s Pulse) is the segment devoted to getting a fair slice of the public opinion and to building its listenership.

Veteran journalist Petronila Cleto usually approaches people with a voice recorder and set of questions on burning issues.

“The fundamental issue is that we serve to be the channel of the voices that are unheard, the marginalised and underrepresented,” Cleto says.

For that, the radio show was accorded honourable mention status in the 2014 National Campus and Community Radio Awards, a significant recognition for exceptional programming across Canada using Third language (other than English and French) as its medium.

At one time mid-2015, the collective was facing a tough decision to retain its Sunday slot at the campus radio station after a fraught rebranding of CHRY to VIBE 1055. Supporters of community radio were left receiving specific signals of an uncertain future.

It was the height of the global campaign for Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina formerly working as a domestic worker, to be spared from execution in Indonesia over alleged drug smuggling charges. The last episode that the collective presented was incisively titled “The Race to Save Mary Jane Veloso.” The caregiver was granted an 11th-hour temporary reprieve by the Jakarta government but that was the same day that the radio management implemented a major shift. Station Manager announced the that "CHRY will permanently end all program and volunteer experiences and will not renew all shows" on April 30th.

Everyone was shocked.

The management team's move to change the look to yellow, sound to ‘urban alternative’, and the “feel” added an air of desperation. It was even more difficult for the programmers when the management also trimmed down the grid from 96 to 45 shows.

“Actually the shift isn't sudden at all. ln fact,'the corporation' has been on a path of improvement and new media readiness for the past 4-years. The steps being implemented are a natural evolution of the broadcast and growth of 'the corporation' over 28 years on the FM dial,” said CHRY Management team in their closing package.

As a consequence of such outright dismissal of volunteers, a group of concerned university students, staff members, board members and programmers along with community members, business owners and donors formed a campaign called #SaveCHRY to ensure community access continues at the said radio station.

“The motives behind VIBE 1055, CHRY has undermined the basic respect for due process, defaulted in providing any meaningful so-called professional training for programmers and has used that as a pretext to dismiss them,” responded the group in their petition.

Meanwhile, a few weeks after the closure the talk show’s collective was called in for a dialogue with the CHRY station management as represented by Reid. The team was asked to submit a new program wheel, which denotes the sequence of all elements within the hour-long weekly timeslot.

Radyo Migrante stood by its perceived principle that community radio is to function in empowering communities and give alternative, non-mainstream and non-government organizations a voice. 

Of the number of Filipino ethnic media across Canada, Radyo Migrante has been recognized as one of the two significant radio programs according to monitoring and research firm MIREMS or Multilingual International Research and Ethnic Media Services.

As the Toronto-based Filipino radio show apparently amassed significant following both locally and internationally, the CHRY management considered the talk show to be back on air, The show's team conceded despite the latter's actions that were highly questionable and involved labour and human rights issues.

“We also fulfill the mandate of community radio that is 'from the masses, to the masses',” Rhea Gamana shared.

With this reason, the team decided to come back with an episode in September 2015 featuring a commemoration of the social ills during the fascist dictatorship of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and its relevance today.

Now at a new schedule of Sundays 1-2pm Radyo Migrante team resolved to continue taking up urgent issues, from local cases such as caregiver Luvy Alicbusan’s petition to the Immigration ministry to transnational topics such as defending human rights of Indigenous peoples and remembering, the Ampatuan massacre, the single deadliest event for journalists in history.

Seeking to incorporate awareness into social action, lineup of hosts now change each episode. The host-swap scheme then opens up more opportunities for training people who are interested in broadcasting.

Radyo Migrante desires to expand the horizons of community radio and critical media into public conversation. Just how small-scale community media could support and advancing large-scale political change processes would continue to be a challenge. Lack of resources and precarity of labour remain a dimension that further undermines the potentials of alternative media.

About the author Yshmael Cabana:

Born in Mandaluyong City, Philippines, Ysh Cabana holds a BSc in Architecture and has works exhibited in Manila, New York and San Francisco for his collaborative practical architecture design for super typhoon Haiyan victims in the Philippines.

Cabana's social practice continues to focus on community organising as he has co-led a walking tour with Heritage Toronto and Jane's walk in 2015, has published the first Filipino-Canadian literary collection Akdaan, and has co-produced shows with Radyo Migrante that is accorded significant recognition by the National Campus and Community Radio Association in 2014.

Cabana was also commissioned to produce artwork for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am/ParaPan Am Peoples' Cauldron. The creative process of which included brainstorming sessions with over 300 community members to reflect their diversity.