RESPONDING to the struggles of lockdown, HITZ FM has been helping listeners cope with the stress of restrictions healthily by introducing initiatives that emphasise mental health and general well-being.
To talk about the interactions further and how the hip radio station is evolving in its approach, we caught up with announcers Ean, Arnold, Zher, Keanu, and Calista recently to discover in detail how they are taking part in creating a safe space for listeners at home during times of uncertainty.
The Vibes: Hey guys, happy to have everyone on the call! Hope you guys are safe and staying sane during this lockdown. Tell us, what has been keeping each of you positive?
Calista: I think the first lockdown was very different—I stayed sane by keeping myself busy. I was just constantly doing something 24/7 to keep life as normal and telling myself I was going to be fine.
The second lockdown was a little bit different in a way that I couldn't bring myself to stay busy, but I'm trying to be okay with the fact that I'm not doing much other than work.
At this point, we've been in this [lockdown] state for quite some time. I'm pretty much there, in terms of navigating the days positively where I have a couple of friends as company and are nice by checking in now and then.
They make it a point to do a video call at least every week. So, staying in contact with people – which I wasn't doing a lot of in the beginning – and staying connected is what I do mostly. Of course, scrolling on TikTok all day and being okay with it is what has been keeping me sane.
Zher: For me, there are good days and bad days. Like on the bad days, I allow myself to feel the way I feel while keeping in mind that there are certain things that, you know, I still have to do (ie work, chores, etc). But I'm conscious that if I'm not feeling so good on that day, I take a moment to acknowledge it.
It’s not up to a point where I beat myself over it, but it's like a mental balancing thing.
I have been trying to maintain my morning routine no matter what since the beginning of 2020 – waking up, doing a 20-minute stretch before working out, and meditating.
One thing that has been keeping me positive and distracted during the lockdown is something very basic – it’s baking, which I particularly love. I have been spending a lot of time trying to perfect the butter cake/loaf. I did about 60 attempts, and the decent ones, I’ll share with friends.
Cake is my love language, and if you have received a cake from me, that means I'm thinking about you. I care about you. I've sent all you [Hitz crew] here a cake at least once during this lockdown – well except for those who are on a diet and stuff.
Keanu: Well, I have been reading and I treat it as my downtime. It makes me feel relaxed and connected with myself and not connected to the distractions of work or whatever.
TV: That’s great. Any recommendations for our readers?
K: ‘The Art of Letting God’, it’s a book by Mizi Wahid. I'm going on a spiritual journey like that, so this is one of my favourite reads. It’s not too preachy and is just nice.
[Apart from reading] I’m a talkative person but what people may find surprising is that I have an introverted side to me as well. I like being in my room and not talking – opening my window, listening to the birds chirping, while enjoying the fresh air.
Silence is very priceless, and hard to get so I value it, especially during lockdown. It does give me the kind of much-needed rejuvenation before having to go back into reality.
Z: Keanu also has an Instagram account dedicated to the books that he has read and what he recommends.
K: Yeah, it’s called @keanukuniya.
TV: That's awesome! What about you Ean? Arnold? How are you keeping your sanity in check?
Arnold: Both of us are a little bit more fortunate in a way because we still get to go to work – we still get to go to the office, like being able to drive every Monday to Friday and talk to somebody. I still have that human interaction with Ean every single day.
On a more personal level, I have been very lucky because I am a sports fan and recently there was the Euro 2020. And now, it’s the Olympics so that brightens up the mood a little during lockdown.
There has always been something to look forward to for the last couple of months. In between, you know, going for walks outside when I can is also how I try to stay optimistic.
Ean: So, there is that effort on his part, Arnold – I don’t know if he realises it – makes an event out of things. I have never seen him down during this period because he always finds something to keep positive. That's a very commendable trait, and I respect that of him.
A: Yeah, but you may not know what goes on the inside… *chuckles*
E: Oh, no...
K: Wait, are we going to do a ‘Real Talk’ session now? Oh my God, okay go ahead and open up, open up…
*group laughs*
E: Anyway, how I go about my days is like what Zher said earlier. It’s getting that morning routine out because once you are up, you don't have to worry about other things that much when your day already starts productively, and I do that by getting to work. It kind of sets the tone for the rest of the day.
As soon as I get back from it, my wife is all equally about meeting that positive mindset. So, when I am home, we try to get everything done (ie chores) and not leave anything for later.
We also change our activities every day and kind of do what best suits the mood to beat the monotony. Yoga and meditation help tremendously because it's about you, it doesn't help anybody else but you.
Z: Yeah. Dedicating a chunk of your day, or a bit of it, to yourself, whether it's reading, meditating, exercising, or whatever is very important you know.
TV: So, ‘Real Talk’ is part of the Hitz initiatives, right? Would you be able to share more about it and the other interactions to help Malaysians during these trying times?
Z: ‘Real Talk’ is one of the biggest – and new – efforts that we have this year, especially to accommodate the lockdown where we talk about issues relating to mental health by keeping the engagement active.
We open the floor to our listeners to also share their experience where they can submit topics that they want to talk about, and we will catch up on how we are coping.
We also have the ‘Hitz FMCO Hangout: Game Night’, which is a weekly game night with our listeners.
K: So, a little background, we always get DMs like, ‘Oh, can we join in games? Can you do this segment?’ from listeners. And since we all are mostly working from home where everything is online, why don’t we start streaming on different platforms.
We started the game night because we want to involve our listeners more. And it’s a fun session to do especially when everyone is bored at home. We alternate it with the ‘Real Talk’ session weekly.
E: To add, it's also a good chance for us to get together, the whole team I mean – we see each other more online now than we did before. It's kind of brought us closer together, and that's one of the good things.
TV: It’s great to see the energy being brought outside of the radio space as well. What about the ‘Stay Home Playlist’? How do you maintain the engagement you get online and add it back to the station?
C: We’ve always had a pretty good relationship with our listeners where they constantly engage and interact with our posts. Of course, in that setting, they would also request a lot of songs.
The ‘Stay Home Playlist’ is where fans can kind of request for about fifteen songs and control that hour. We will choose one listener’s playlist per week. So, it's kind of connecting with the listeners and being open to what they want and hopefully being able to give them more than ever before.
E: The whole theme here is that whatever people are going through, we sort of try to be there for everyone. With ‘Real Talk’ for instance, we try to show everyone that we are also facing our issues, and hopefully that makes us more relatable where listeners can also reach out to us.
TV: Going back to ‘Real Talk’, it’s an activity that is specifically created to be more sensitive to the current reality. How do you keep the vibrancy of the Hitz personalities and their shows, without being too Oprah?
E: That's the beauty of real talk. We don't have to be fun in that, and that is why we take it outside of regular radio. All of us are involved with it, even the Sabah and Sarawak team are taking part.
We try to be as real as possible where all of us talk about the difficulties that we are going through equally. I guess how we approach this is to be as honest as possible and be as open as possible.
K: Our main objective is not to get people extra depressed coming on the show, like going all ‘I hate this, I hate that’. We simply want people to know that we are all in the same situation and dealing with it together.
TV: Would you say that this approach would be a mainstay for the type of content and culture Hitz is evolving towards?
Z: Yeah, for sure. The pandemic has changed everyone's approach, whether it's how they do business, what they talk about online—it’s about highlighting the important issues.
Everything has been rearranged in terms of what our priorities are considering the pandemic, right? So, moving on, we will be involved in opening the floor to our listeners more, listening to their needs more.
Even when we go on air, we make a very conscious decision to be more real because the world before this is all about like the ‘perfect image’, which does not work in these current times that we live in.
I mean, before the pandemic we would have considered talking about topics like mental health as something too heavy to carry on air. Now, we feel that it is a very important issue to highlight.
In terms of balancing the fun and the seriousness of the matter, we are already doing it as we speak. We are not offering professional advice or are certified therapists, but there is a real power to talking about relatable issues and being open about them.
C: I think it's also very important for a radio station to constantly evolve. Something like ‘Real Talk’, like the actual segment, might not be permanent, it all depends on what happens after this because we have no idea what the future has in store.
So, whatever is more useful and more helpful to our listeners, that is what we will try our best to evolve into as time goes by.
K: Speaking of evolving, radio went from being a one-way thing where people consume to ‘I want to have a say in this too’. The interaction is now a two-way thing.
E: Each of the different shows we have a different approach. For Arnold and me, we have revamped our show. You know, there is a big feature missing that we won't talk about – the elephant in the room – where it was a good time for that change to happen…
TV: You mean with regards to the prank calls?
*group laughs*
E: Yeah, well okay, you said it… I didn’t want to bring it up but…
TV: Oops! OK sorry, I guess we are getting in the candidness of ‘Real Talk’.
E: Yeah, so it’s pretty much about moving away from that type of feature because it was drawing negativity from the public. So, we also are skewing everything that we are doing to not be so negative. We were struggling to find new content at first, but now we realise that there are a lot more things to talk about in the world.
A: So, to echo there a little bit by going back to what Keanu said. Since it's now a very two-way interaction, right? It’s so often that after we do all these ‘Real Talk’ sessions, we meet all these people on Twitter, and have a chat with them as a result.
Maybe daring is not the right word, but listeners will DM you like we are friends, and we get a response like, ‘Oh my God, I can't believe you replied’. People don't expect that kind of reaction, and as an announcer, they put you on a pedestal for some reason. In a way-lah!
C: A lot of times, because of the image we [as radio announcers] portray on-air and on our social media – we are always happy, always down for a laugh – people always tend to be surprised that we also cope similarly like our listeners.
Yes, we try our best to look happy as we get through the pandemic, but we want to also say that ‘Hey, you are not alone in the struggles. There is nothing wrong with you, we are all going through it as well’, and this relates to a lot of our audience, especially the young listeners.
So, with ‘Real Talk’, it’s almost like opening that door and letting them see the other side of the announcers, which kind of brings them closer to us in a way.
TV: Do you think it’s good to sometimes take time to digitally detox? How do you go about doing so?
Z: Yes, 1,000%! One listener brought it up during a ‘Real Talk’ session because we were talking about how social media is affecting us, especially during lockdown. I mean, if you follow someone who is in the United States or Europe, you are seeing them having their holidays in Capri or wherever, and that's one example.
This listener shared how she now edits more consciously who she follows, and she only follows people who can give her positivity.
So, in these times we are more conscious of our boundaries as well, like what information we let in, whose content we want to see, and how it makes us feel. Basically, where we draw the line.
I don’t get online until after I've fulfilled things for myself first.
E: It's easier for me because I never feel like I have to force myself to go online. I don't enjoy social networking as much as everybody else does, because I'm a private person. But because of work, I would make an effort to get more involved.
So, it's been easier to keep those boundaries, you know what I mean? If I need entertainment, I watch videos of Arnold doing something silly and I’m done.
A: I'm like a girl, I like my shoes. Previously, I would look at all these websites where they are constantly pumping you with what to buy. I'm slowly starting to unfollow. It's so depressing because it makes me feel like I am missing out.
C: This for me too has slowly changed, in terms of what I consume. I was obsessed with all the Victoria's Secret angels and stuff, and I guess that is also the thing about reality is that these ideal ‘angels’ don't exist.
Having realised it, I told myself that it is not what I want to see anymore. It doesn't affect me emotionally in that sense but it's just I'm not interested in that type of content anymore.
K: For me, it is not having the Twitter app on my phone, and I have been practising it since last year. I feel very agitated with how everyone was on it, and social media in general.
So, this decision was for me to sort of break up the negativity where people always want to argue about something. I do check in now and then to get content inspirations but that’s mostly it.
TV: Before we forget about one last initiative in keeping spirits up as we navigate the pandemic. What can you tell us about the #KamiCareHelpline? Are you working closely with professional organisations/NGOs as well?
A: We work with Foodpanda and Lotus Malaysia, which is Tesco's new name, to help people who are in need right now. Obviously, because of the pandemic, a lot of people have lost their jobs unfortunately and a lot of businesses had to close.
This initiative aims to further emphasise the #kitajagakita and pulling together necessities to help those who are struggling, by providing food and daily essentials. People can collect and donate at the available Charity Food Bins of the participating Lotus outlets.
K: Yeah, and it’s about encouraging people outside of Hitz to also partake in the effort.
Z: We've also been supporting small to medium businesses on-air as well by giving them free promos through the Kami Care initiative.
So, whether you are a yoga teacher who has classes online or you are selling nasi lemak, making homemade saris – we are promoting all that to help them out for free. – The Vibes, August 7, 2021
