Standing in front of a microphone, voice actor Phil Cruz pretends to wield an amulet to defeat the devil for the latest installment of one of the Philippines’ few surviving radio dramas.
Cruz is part of a small team of voice actors and technicians producing shows that are broadcast in Filipino by DZRH, one of the oldest radio stations in the nation.
Radio dramas were the main source of entertainment for Filipino families after World War II, just like the rest of the world, but their popularity faded with the rise of television, social media and video livestreaming.
Photo: AFP
Still, many longtime listeners, including retirees, farmers, factory workers and taxi drivers, still tune in to catch the latest episode of their favorite horror or drama.
“We’re the only ones left,” Cruz, 64, said during a break in recording at a modern studio incongruously located in a Manila theme park.
Cruz followed his father into voice acting in 1979, back when DZRH aired 18 drama programs over nine hours a day in stiff competition with other broadcasters. Now it produces seven. Among them is Night of Horror, the station’s oldest series that has been terrifying audiences for 66 years with tales of devils, vampires and murderous skeletons. Love, family and poverty are among the themes tackled in other long-running dramas, such as You’re My Only Life and This Is Our Life.
Gerry Mutia produces the sound effects that help listeners visualize the stories and, while many can be computer-generated, he still prefers “the old way.”
Mutia keeps a box of objects in the studio to simulate sounds: coconut shells for galloping horses, a door bolt for the cocking of a gun and stamping his feet in a box of leaves for footsteps in a forest.
He even uses his own voice for a cat’s meow.
“The computer can replicate the sound of a slap, but it is more realistic doing it the old way,” Mutia said, demonstrating by striking together a pair of old rubber shoe soles.
‘only entertainment’
The beauty of radio was that it reached “everyone, even the poor,” said Rosanna Villegas, 63.
She, like Cruz, followed her radio actor father into the industry.
“It’s a means of entertainment, which comes on top of what they watch on TV or the movies,” she said.
“They [fans] tell us their stress disappears,” she said.
Among the DZRH team’s loyal fans is Henry Amadure, who lives by himself on a farm about 60km south of Manila. Amadure listens to The Promise of Tomorrow on a small radio that he always takes with him to the field as he slashes weeds around taro plants. The series is about a friendship between a poor university student and his rich classmate.
“It makes me happy and keeps me company because I work alone,” said Amadure, 58, who was introduced to radio dramas by his grandfather as a teenager. “Sometimes you pick up life lessons from it.”
Amadure, who is separated from his wife, spends 74 Philippine pesos (US$1.30) a week on batteries to keep the radio playing all day while he works on his 4-hectare farm.
Like other farmers in the area, he has no electricity.
His neighbor Cristiteta Arpon, 35, said radio dramas are “our only entertainment.”
“We will be sad if it disappears. It’s our everyday companion and the only thing that makes us happy,” the mother of four said. “We don’t have to waste money” buying Internet access for social media or YouTube.
Food caterer Nerissa Julao, 52, is a member of a radio drama fan club that boasts 17,000 members on Facebook.
Julao tunes in while preparing dishes with two assistants in Guagua municipality, about 80km northwest of Manila.
“Listening to radio dramas sharpens my imagination. The scenes take shape in my mind because the acting is very convincing,” she said.
However, “drama fanatics like us are increasingly becoming a rare breed,” she added.
‘Radio is forever’
The DZRH voice actors said they have no formal training for radio dramas and had picked up their skills by observing their predecessors.
Most of them hold down other jobs such as dubbing Mexican and South Korean television dramas or doing voice-overs.
The challenge for the remaining radio dramas is to attract a new generation of listeners. DZRH has branched out to social media, uploading episodes to YouTube and sharing the links on Facebook, X and TikTok.
“We have a varied audience, but it’s true many of them are also growing old,” Cruz said. “We need to produce material targeting younger people.”
Villegas is optimistic that the dramas will survive.
“For me, radio is forever,” she said.
“It will not disappear because it has such a wide audience,” she said.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS