“The power? Of the DJ? It’s to motivate the crowd man. It’s to have the insight to motivate the crowd. To have the crowd at your fingertips. To control the crowd.” – Kool Herc
I JUST got word that a popular disc jockey in Cagayan de Oro City is making it big in the United Arab Emirates.
Mikael Grey is still Mikael Grey on air. The only thing different is he's now on air over at WOW 107 FM at UAE and goes by the name of Mike Fernando.
Mike told me that WOW 107 FM launched its regular broadcast on June 6, 2015 and since then it was never the same again for the Filipino community at UAE
On Mike's Facebook page someone posted “Walangkupas pa rin (Still timeless)... Sooooo happy for u.”
I read about the station's launching at the Online News-Emirates 24/7 Entertainment website and Mike Fernando aka Michael Grey is the head of radio programming.
The station's audience is the Filipino community in UAE. When I look at the image, I knew then that it was the great DJ Mikael Grey of Cagayan de Oro City.
The new station is part of Impraza Media Net, operated and managed by Malar Global Network. The network operates and manages Radio Salaam 106.5 (Tamil), Radio Me 100.3 (Malayalam) and Radio Hello 89.5 (Telugu).
“We are on air from Sunday 5 am. The Filipino community is a growing expatriate community in the UAE. The station motto is Hatid ng Pilipino, Para sa Pilipino (Delivered by Filipinos, for Filipinos),” Mike said.
“Filipinos love fun and music and we felt the need for a second radio station in the UAE for the community. In addition to Tagalog and English music, we have an hour of news broadcast,” said Fernando who runs the 5 a.m.-9 a.m. show entitled “Buena Mano with Mike Fernando.”
The station opened with a bang through a contest in which listeners were awarded gold coins every hour. Despite his 15 years’ experience, Fernando admitted that he was nervous during the first broadcast.
It's actually no surprise to hear about the success of Michael Grey, who's Mike Montalban in real life, outside the Philippines.
“Aside from my daily boards, I handle the station operations,” Mike told me. I asked him how he made it to the entertainment industry at UAE and he told me that a friend introduced him “to the principals and it quickly moved forward from there.”
He also confided that WOW 107 FM is the first FM station in UAE that closely mirrors how a Philippine radio station would be formatted. English and Tagalog would be the languages used during the program in order to draw the Filipino community there.
It is a huge job for Mike to entertain the 700,000 Filipinos in the UAE, based on numbers given by the Philippine Embassy there.
A little throwback to readers: the former Mikael Grey is known for drawing in listeners and building a solid fan base that asked what happened to him after noticing that he went off the local airwaves and wasn't appearing as host in big events like beauty pageants.
I am a fan to be honest and I joined those asking where Mikael Grey was. The last time I heard of him was in 2002. Grey is known as the “Rick Dees” of the Philippines, Ian Huerbana of IFM 99.1 said.
Ian Huerbana said Mikael Grey is a living legend not only in Cagayan de Oro but among the Djs in Visayas and Mindanao.
“Wala ....wa pa natawo ang mo equal sa iyang ka-witty (there's no one who could equal his wittiness)... the Rick Dees of the Philippines,” Ian said.
Grey and I were together at Radio Mindanao Network (RMN) where he was DJ at dxVM and I was on board at the AM station dxCC.
It was a big problem for dxVM when Grey resigned and went to another station as he brought with him the other great DJs like Johnny Small, Little Ryan, Jack Friday and the others.
He lorded over the FM airwaves from dxvm 99.1 airwaves until he transferred as station manager of Killer bee 89.3.
When asked about the challenges he's facing in his new job, Mike said “the main challenge for a new radio station is to attract as many listeners and maintain that relationship so that they keep coming back to us.”
“Our programming is exactly the same format that a Filipino would listen to in the Philippines. Only the advertisements and commercials will be local, but everything else will sound like the Filipino radio stations of ABS–CBN and GMA networks in the Philippines,” Mike said.
As a fan wrote on his Facebook page, Mike Fernando aka Michael Grey is back and “walang kupas” (timeless).”
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(Susan Palmes-Dennis is a veteran journalist from Cagayan de Oro City, Misamis Oriental, Northern Mindanao in the Philippines is now employed as teacher assistant in one of the school systems in the Carolinas.)