A recent post of mine on social media rubbed my radio colleagues up the wrong way. The post read: “Finish the sentence: One question artists hate that radio presenters ask all the time is....”. Naturally, artists respond and it confirmed a few things that I been observing. Radio colleagues behind the scenes felt “sold out”. That, I have no business embarrassing the very industry I “claim” to love. 

Here are a few things that one needs to understand the author of this column. I am extremely observant. I see things many think no one sees. One would think that you’d know that about me by now. About the status, a trend I saw develop in the last few months or so was radio presenters being extremely laissez-faire in their approach to interviews. TV presenters sometimes harbour the same attitude. Don’t get me wrong, radio presenting is at a fantastic place right now in terms of content delivery and technique. Yes, there will be a few bad apples but we cannot let these few rotten apples spoil it for the whole industry. 

However, in terms of interviews, a good majority of the presenters currently on Namibian radio and TV entertainment shows lack that cutting edge with interviews. Radio presenters do not even ask lead questions. To top it off, radio presenters are at times afraid to address the elephant in the room with their guests. For example, if Sunny Boy’s cheating scandal hits on Tuesday and he was scheduled for an interview on Wednesday, that radio presenter – whether Sunny Boy likes it or not – needs to ask him about that scandal. It is a catch 22 situation if you think about it. Most artists who contributed to my post meant to breathe life into what I have been observing for a while – hope that radio presenters become a tat bit sharper with their questions. However, artists need to be ready for that too. Namibian artists normally shy away from answering questions about their scandals and would use the opportunity to accuse the interviewer of dividing the industry. 

Notwithstanding that, radio presenters – and by a large share – TV presenters need to do better. Radio and TV presenters need to corona questions like: ‘What can we expect from you?’ ‘So, tell us who is (artist name)?’ ‘So, tell us what you have been up to?’ etc. These are lazy, dumb and downright stupid questions. I want the art of radio presenting to be of pristine quality – all the time across the board. We need that badly in these uncertain times. If we do bad radio, we lose listeners. When we lose listeners, off goes advertisers. It will never be my wish to see a radio presenter on the street. A little bit of research ain’t gonna kill nobody. There’s no reason to be mad at me. I will always be that person who will highlight something – whether you like it or not – for the greater good. Make peace with it and improve on your interviewing skills, amae. 
Until the next loop, we say “GMTM”!
NSK is a professional MC. For bookings, email naobebsekind@gmail.com
@naobebsekind (twitter)