Ricardo Chacón, a featured radio broadcaster in Contramaestre I

Radio Grito de Baire (RGB), a local radio station in the municipality of Contramaestre, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, has highly qualified specialists who honor Cuban Radio in general. Such is the case of Ricardo Chacón Rubio, announcer, scriptwriter and program director.

Today Contramaestre News talks to this radio artist.

Q: How do you get to the radio?

A: First of all, when I was in high school I was a radio correspondent. Then, in the early 1990s, while I was in military service, they issued a call for aptitude tests for those interested in working on a new radio station that would be opened at Cruce Los Baños in the Sierra Maestra. I applied and passed the exam.

Q: How was the beginning on the radio?

A: As soon as I started working at the station, I began to do everything, all the specialties of radio. Usually, in these places far from the cities it is very difficult to find all the personnel prepared for each specialty. So that situation led me to learn practically everything that is done on the radio.

Q: Which specialties did you go for?

A: Program direction, sound production, scriptwriter, announcer, even journalism, propaganda, sports commentary. Everything the station needed at the time. And the learning had to be arranged by my means, everything was practically empirical.

Q: What did that stage bring you professionally?

I must say that the time came to be evaluated in the different specialties. To be evaluated as a broadcaster you had to spend two and a half years in the specialty, then an evaluation to acquire a national category of radio personality. And I evaluated myself with satisfactory results in 1998. That was my first evaluation and I verified that I could.

Q: Why did you come to Radio Grito de Baire in Contramaestre?

A: After having evaluated myself, I was already in conditions of greater challenges. And in 1999 I came to Contramaestre, to get closer to my family. Now, the challenge represented by Radio Grito de Baire was the greatest attraction for me. This radio plant had a greater range, transmitted a greater number of hours, the programs were more complex and demanded more from the different specialists, with a prestigious collective. In other words, I was fascinated by the idea of having to improve everything.

Q: In addition to speaking, what other things do you do here at RGB?

A: Initially I did sports narrations, directed musical spaces, sports, youth, family spaces, wrote scripts and also some journalism, plus working as a radio personality that was always my strength. What I liked to do best.

Q: How do you improve what you do?

The first thing is my constant concern for improvement, apart from having a good technique, of having certain aptitudes for broadcasting the voice through the radio, you have to have a good general culture, be well informed, read a lot, be constantly updated; and along with that, study the technique a lot, present yourself at the events that are called for periodic evaluations with previous preparation, plus the daily commitment to the audience.

Q: Do you feel any feedback in what you do?

A: Of course I do. The people who listen to you, who say their criteria in the street, we have a very critical audience. Just as they praise you if what they heard is good, they also tell you that it didn’t work, or it could be better. That helps a lot to enhance work quality, quality is a daily commitment.

(Continued…)