It’s sort of like the island of Atlantis.

Legend has it (in this case, legend means “Plato”) that Atlantis had been an ancient superpower, conquering numerous states in the west. After a failed attempt to conquer Athens, the island “was swallowed up by the sea.” Global warming’s my guess. Plato may have been a boy-lover, but that man knew what was going on.

Anyway, I meant to say radio. Radio is sort of like the island of Atlantis. The Golden Age of Radio occurred in the 1920s, when commercial radio was just becoming popular and you were a “wow” kid if you had a radio at home. But this reign would be short-lived (or long-lived, if you think 30-odd years is long) with the advent of television toward the close of the 1950s.

If not the mainstream pop stations, from where, notably, most of us have picked up our fake American twangs, we are quick to dismiss it nowadays: the mindless jingles that are but rehashes of Korean pop songs, the teleradyo series that border on the ridiculous, the “tototot,” kailangan pa bang i-memorize ‘yan, and myriad other sound bites which we think of only as the background noise to the daily commute. We shut it out as soon as we get the chance; we prefer our iPods anyway.

The interesting thing about radio though, unlike Atlantis, is that it, though obviously defeated by TV, has not quite sunk into the middle of the ocean to be only the stuff of nostalgia, speculation and (urban) legend. It has remained. Think about it — most every other form of entertainment has passed into extinction: the Tamagotchi has died, Family Computer, the early versions of Gameboy and Play Station. And so have Beta Max and VHS, no matter how enviable a collection of movies one may have built. Even the song hits which we used to buy with our lunch money. But radios, with some minor modifications and additions (radio with CD player, radio with Hello Kitty logo), continue to be sold, bought and used.

This longevity, this uninterrupted availability, I think, is something that we take for granted. We do not realize that radio continues to be the most accessible medium to most people — we can use it in transport, at home, and it reaches the remotest parts of the archipelago. Floy Quintos’ “Shock Value Take 2,” currently being staged by Dulaang UP (tells the painful truth about Philippine television as it is today, and is a complete treat to watch) has a scene set in an island inhabited only by two people, who happen to own a vintage radio. The play suggests that they have it better off than one would be inclined to think.

national issues.” Even April Boy Regino reportedly used the backdoor strategy to ensure his rise to fame: he had provincial radio stations play his songs over and over before trying to make it into the Manila market.Some people have learned to utilize this ubiquity. They say the 1986 People Power Revolution would not have been possible without the pivotal role played by Radio Veritas. Currently, Gang Badoy’s Rock Ed Radio on NU 107 offers alternative education that attempts to “get spoiled teenagers to care about

I also fancy radio advertising to be a challenging field, but also one that is ripe — when people are stuck inside the jeepney in the middle of Monday morning traffic, they can’t exactly change the channel. The Dulcolax radio ad aired sometime in the mid-2000s has stuck with me in particular: “Si Grace, di mapa-oo; si Vangie, di mapa-oo; si Gemma di mapa-oo… Pati si Vince di mapa-oo… Mag-Dulcolax! O-oo ka rin.” One cannot help but laugh (or pass gas) when hearing it the first time.

All these people, and others like them, know that media is precisely that: a medium, a vehicle, to get information, even ideology, across. Radio usually speaks to a captive audience. It is almost accidental, but the assimilation that occurs here is subtler and perhaps more far-reaching than that which occurs in other forms. Consequently, I have been told by many older writers that listening to the radio, particularly AM radio, is a valuable tool in the trade: there is a sensibility, a pulse, that can only be felt when immersed in this microcosm. It informs and breeds a unique feel for Filipino life. This is perhaps one of the causes of its dwindling popularity: in an age of conveniences, it yanks out of the comfort zone and reminds the listener that there is a polluted world out there. It’s not just about the music: it is the raw, unrefined quality, perhaps the length of segments that continue to defy declining attention spans, the reality that is absent in most other cut-and-edited media, that make it true.
And though it looks as though it has lost some of its former luster, all signs suggest that this island is not about to sink anytime soon.

Long live the old king of the airwaves.

The author is a fourth year Philosophy major at the University of the Philippines-Diliman