First Blog

Hi everyone. I’m ashamed to admit this but I did my work placement during the holidays and I am only getting started my first blog. I worked at Faraway FM, an independent radio station in the Maldives during the month of July. It belongs to my father and so I was kind of like the Assistant to the boss. My actual job was to get the promotions up and running and I worked alongside Ehab, who is in charge of PR and Promotions at Faraway. Like a lot of aspects of my placement, I found my actual role to be ambiguous. I don’t know whether it was the nature of an independent radio station or if it was cultural differences between my country and Australia, somehow it didn’t feel like a job. When I woke up in the morning I actually looked forward to going to work. I will try to explain these differences in upcoming blogs.

Just to give you guys a bit of background about Faraway and Radio Stations in general in the Maldives: Up until 2005 private radio stations were not allowed (Maldives was a bit of a controlled state, to put it mildly, being a one-party state until 2005). Faraway FM was one of four private stations to be allowed a broadcasting license and my dad, being a media-man for years (he was head of news and current affairs for Television Maldives) was in a great position to grab a license. Faraway FM is a subsidiary business under Faraway Private Ltd which is a media company that runs a daily newspaper, owns a printery, a bookshop and an events travel arm (which is now being incorporated as Faraway Holidays).

Faraway FM is fast becoming Maldives leading music station aimed at the market of 15 – 55. It was pretty exciting we got into a cab one day and the cab-driver said he will tune into a cool radio station that plays western music and voila it turned out to be ours! Faraway broadcasts mainly in English and it has two great shows daily – a morning show hosted by two guys called Mohud and Zifaaf and an evening show focussed around current affairs. Faraway FM employs 10 full-time staff and 10 part-time staff including programme producers, presenters and musicians. Faraway FM is on air from 6am to 2am (18 hours a day) and streams its programmes to the world on www.faraway.fm in real time.

I was technically one of the part-time admin staff, but ended up working full-time. This is a country where office hours are undefined (unlike the 9 to 5 standard here) Trading hours are also undefined so employees come and go into the office anytime they like. People even work the same hours on weekends (how crazy is that?) My dad tried to twist my arm to read the news but I said no, I am supposed to be doing my PR placement and that’s exactly what I did. My cousin Ehab who was my direct supervisor is doing a lot of promo stuff like road shows, competitions, poster campaigns and rock concerts aimed at involving young people and increasing its listener base. Two specific pieces of promotional events I was involved with was Masterpiece – Magical Maldivian Moments (more of that later) and ongoing Roadshows Faraway FM.

My dad is a bit of a workaholic and so I had no choice but be at the grindstone everyday! He does the current affairs show in the evening, talking about the headline news and he tries his level best not to get involved too much in political stuff (sometimes quite unsuccessfully!). I like the fact that he talks about international affairs and bring it down to a chat-show level that appeals to our listener base. My whole work experience stint was good fun also because it gave me a lot of time to be with my dad as well, although I had to work every day, except Friday mornings (Friday is the start of the weekend in some Muslim countries and on Fridays Faraway begins broadcasting at 2pm after Friday prayers). My dad has big hopes of me coming back to work full time at Faraway FM and I certainly look forward to it.

So that’s my first blog. Apologies to Katharina and you all for taking so long and I hope all of you enjoyed your work experiences so far.