Cherisse Moe

Meet Terin Cal­len­der. He goes by the so­bri­quet Su­per­Jig­ga TC, and his col­leagues dub him the su­per­star artiste. Then there's So­phie Wight. She's the lone fe­male of the three mem­ber team, and she's re­ferred to as the brains of the op­er­a­tion. Round­ing off the dy­nam­ic trio is Ra­mon Camps, aka DJ Sit­u­a­tion. Hailed as the cham­pi­on DJ, his mu­si­cal tal­ents are put to the test every morn­ing from 6 am to 9 am as he spins a di­verse mix of in­vig­o­rat­ing mu­sic, just what lis­ten­ers need to wake them up and get their adren­a­line pump­ing. To­geth­er they are the per­son­al­i­ties and voic­es be­hind the Morn­ing Slam on the na­tion's newest ra­dio sta­tion, SLAM 100.5FM...Pro­gres­sive Ur­ban. Mak­ing its grand en­trance on­to T&T's air­waves on March 18, the ra­dio fre­quen­cy, which falls un­der the ban­ner of the Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML), is work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to carve its own niche in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. So far, so good.

New mod­ern sound

"The Morn­ing Slam is fun, kicks, in­for­ma­tive and mu­si­cal," Camps, the sta­tion's mu­sic di­rec­tor told the T&T Guardian. The chem­istry among the group is, ac­cord­ing to TC, comedic. "It's the first time that we're work­ing with each oth­er, so that in it­self is a sto­ry. We are of three dif­fer­ent age gen­res, so it's very in­ter­est­ing." Ac­cord­ing to the team, the morn­ing show's main ob­jec­tive is to in­tro­duce to T&T to a "new mod­ern sound" and rev­o­lu­tionise the lo­cal ra­dio for­mat. "So, it's not about push­ing what's al­ready been fig­ured out or said. It's less about gen­res and more about vibes," stat­ed Wight. "The beau­ty of this sta­tion is that we are very to­geth­er. We work as a team. Fifty per cent of us come from mul­ti-me­dia so when we want to do some­thing, we are in­spired to get it done and get it done right."

Great mix

Not­ing that the sta­tion al­so sup­ports lo­cal tal­ent, Camps said once lo­cal artistes de­liv­ered qual­i­ty, ra­dio-wor­thy mu­sic and lyrics, they would be giv­en a lis­ten­ing ear and a fair chance to get their ma­te­r­i­al played.

SLAM 100.5fm tar­gets the 35 and un­der age de­mo­graph­ic, and con­tin­ues to push the en­ve­lope as it aims to set a new stan­dard in ur­ban ra­dio. Speak­ing of push­ing the en­ve­lope, the morn­ing show hosts al­so in­vite their lis­ten­ers to get the vi­su­al SLAM ex­pe­ri­ence by view­ing the morn­ing show and oth­er seg­ments live via the so­cial net­work­ing site, Face­book. "Peo­ple re­al­ly need to see some of the things that go on in here.

I have this thing where I say 'sham­bles', mean­ing re­al prob­lems! Peo­ple don't know what does be go­ing on in here na!" joked TC. Per­haps he may be re­fer­ring to the fact that So­phie has made it a habit of walk­ing off with the head­phones in her ears when the seg­ment breaks for ad­ver­tise­ments. Or maybe its when she us­es the floor space in the stu­dio to do yo­ga. Then again, it could al­so be catch­ing a glimpse of Camps tak­ing some shut eye when he thinks the coast is clear!

Pro­gramme di­rec­tor Joel "Sig­nal To Noise" Mor­ris said he was very pleased with the Morn­ing Slam and stat­ed that he re­mained op­ti­mistic that it would soon be­come the num­ber one morn­ing pro­gramme in T&T. "I think we will get there in a few months. In fact, oth­er sta­tions are now tweak­ing their for­mats to sound like ours," he de­clared. "Very soon, we are go­ing to add oth­er el­e­ments to it by way of fea­tures, pro­duc­tion and sound ef­fects." Mor­ris al­so dis­closed that fans could soon look for­ward to a new ap­pli­ca­tion that would al­low them to gain vi­su­al and au­dio stream­ing of the sta­tion's pro­grammes via their mo­bile phones. "It's all about pro­gres­sion," he said.