What a week!

Island sound Radio’s managing director Colin H Tabone is taking it to bigger and better things. Interview by Zillah Bugeja

Our station was one of the first to go on air when the government gave out licences. It was initially operated by Frank Salt, and immediately acquired an enthusiastic following. I was on the board in the last four to five years, representing INCO Ltd, a company in which I have shares and which had shares in ISR at the time.

Frank Salt was bought out by the shareholders, who then decided that I was the chosen one to monitor the situation. Little did I know at the time that I’d end up managing it as well.

It’s shocking that in an island of our size, that there are now over 20 licences for radios. We are 100 per cent commercial, and I think we are doing reasonably well considering all the problematic factors of radios. The political and Church stations draw a lot of advertising. Other than that, I class us as being one of the leading ones.

It’s time that they controlled the number of licences given out, there are way too many. Something interesting that’s happened recently is this fax we received from the Broadcasting Authority. It seems that just because Joe Grima won his lawsuit to get his radio station licence given back to him, the BA is now asking for all of us to apply anew for the licence every year. We have to pay over Lm7,000 annually for the licence and sundry expenses associated with using the antenna, so there’s a great expense involved. I guess we’ll all have to meet up to see how it’s going to affect us.

I’m a great fan of radio, but not necessarily the type of music we play. Next year I’ll be 70, that explains why I go for the more sedate sounds , although after three years here I have managed to be able to gauge other people’s responses to the station. We are undoubtedly a radio station for younger people.

We are constantly gauging our listeners to see whether we are giving the right type of music at the right time.

As of 1 September we made major changes to the schedule. One reason for this is that we aim to cater for more adult tastes. We are also looking at creating more in-depth news, that’s important to us and to our listeners.

As far as policy goes, we are busy trying hard to introduce programmes in Maltese. In the past we had Joe Tanti for over a year, who has now moved away from the radio scene, and we have been trying to replace him with someone of an equal standard. Very soon we will have a full Maltese programme, possibly a small discussion programme. Whatever, it will be useful.

The language factor is not really a bone of contention any more. The station was originally focused towards the English-speaking tourists. Today we don’t believe that the British tourist is necessarily the best spender. Today everybody speaks English but doesn’t necessarily want to hear English comments all the time. We are doing our best to change direction to cater for those listeners who’d prefer to hear Maltese as well. We’ve weighed the pros and cons, whatever you do you win some and lose some. We feel very strongly now that a Maltese language programme will be a natural progression.

Our aims are constantly to be fine-tuning what we’ve done so far. A reliable gauge is how much you sell, and our sales have improved and are improving. The temptation is to go too young, and that is something we have to resist.

In a short while we will be better able to take better advantage of those students reading for a degree in Communications. I’m sure it will be of great benefit to the stations. These people come out of university with big ideas and they soon learn that they have to adapt themselves, bendng their ideals a bit.

We are computerising most of our works, and are planning on moving the premises too. We are looking for a centrally situated site, on a larger scale, which will give us the opportunity to go into other areas of business, such as production of adverts.

When it comes to paying bills, advertisers don’t look favourably unless they are getting results. Results do come, but there has to be a build-up.

While I’m always at the office by 9am, I don’t have fixed times. First thing I do upon arrival is check on the cheques received. Naturally the fccus is on dealing with any immediate problems, like people not turning up for work, and to see that the radio schedule is being followed. I spend time analysing areas in the business where we could improve or cut costs. There are regular meetings with presenters too. Many of the staff have been here a number of years, so their input is highly valued. The sales people are involved too, because the discussion is continuous on how best to gauge our advertisers, so the salespeople are the best suited to do that.

The presenters are personalities in themselves, not what you would call easy to control. Because they are also engaged in clubs they are the ones who have their fingers on the pulse of the young, so this precious knowledge is then balanced with what the salespeople think.

But really, I don’t know how they manage to perform for those long hours, just looking at the microphone. All of them have a play list and they are allowed about five per cent of the play time to dedicate to their own music.

We are often asked about our policy on playing songs in Maltese. We do put one or two Maltese songs on, but they are usually not at all in line with the style of music we play. If we can help young talent we will.

As with any other business, there are no rules to follow, no magic guidelines. We have to look after our product, which is the music itself. The selection of music is not something automatic, we put a lot of thought into it.

In my past lives I’ve had various and varied work experience, but always on the financial side of things. I started my career with Shell for 16 years, first in sales and then because I had accountancy qualifications I because the auditor. I then joined MDC as a projects accountant, in fact I was one of the first people working in MDC when it was founded in 1968. In the 1970s I was asked to be the financial controller of a factory which had 600 employees and was facing closure. I was so much against it closing down that I made an arrangement with the banks concerned to take over the running of it myself once the banks had been paid. So I went into manufacturing, which I found both challenging and hard. It was labour intensive, but I go for challenges. That’s why I’d like to see newer sidelines taking place in the station.

Nothing in my way scares me, nothing. I’m a Gozitan, all Gozitans are ambitious.

I was educated at St Edwards, they build up your character.

I do a lot of sailing and I race too. You could say that I’ve been sailing all my life, since I was about eight years old. I just love the sea. The last race I took part in was Scoglietti. I was short-handed this time, there was only myself and my wife, we make a very good team.

So in my private time I enjoy sailing to Gozo on the weekends, and naturally there’s the never-ending spate of maintenance to be done on Quest. I do love to read, biographies mainly. Right now I’m reading something by Time Severn, an explorer who sails on his own boat. Islands of Spices, I think it’s called.

It goes without saying that I listen to the radio, but switching from station to station to check out the competition. Competition, what competition? We do hold competitions on air…