It’s quite sad to see this development. In the 2000s, foreign ODA budgets often piped into Vietnamese radio stations to improve their programming and technology, and the inclusion of live, unfiltered programming is one of the key in this development.
Stations like VOV Traffic/91FM, while born as just simply a “commercial” service to fulfill the VOV target of increasing their advertising revenue, have gone on an entirely different direction. They know that they don’t have money to buy things like RCS Master Control or something, so they done it in a very traditional way like normal radio, and when they live, they live in the most unfiltered way, when the presenters have to do everything, from designing own posters to compiling their own playlist. Management don’t care much about how it should sound, there are no consultants.
The effect of the “unfiltered” live broadcasting style can still heard today. Phone-in are often filled with random noise because of environment surrounding you, or even prone to disconnection live on-air. The presenters could talk anything they want, so as the callers. All people are engaged, from calling to social media.
It’s hard to imagine that the foreign ODAs are used to help the Vietnamese stations sound unique now, yet these nations somewhat destroyed their uniqueness to recording companies and consultants…