The beauty about WordPress and other blog sites is that one gets to know which posts get the most “hits” or views. To my surprise, one of the most active posts is one entitled “Broadcasters with no credibility”, which was a discourse about two young broadcasters, Rhoderick Tecson and Novi Guazo, formerly top stars of Bombo Radyo, but now struggling to make an impact with another station.
This is an indication that many Ilonggos are interested to know more about Tecson and Guazo, especially that they have the distinction of having fallen from the top in the popularity ratings to the bottom of the pit. And it happened that this morning (May 29), I had coffee with a Bombo broadcaster who knows the true character of these young broadcasters.
So I decided to write this post and reveal more insider information about Tecson and Guazo.
From the time he was in college, Tecson’s reputation as a “hanginon“, or eccentric, was already well established. “He would often sit alone in a corner, sipping coffee, and not talk with anybody,” one UPV alumnus told me.
This personality appears to have deepened when Tecson was named an anchorman of the Bombo Radyo Iloilo, the acknowledged leader in the broadcast industry in the city and province. Tecson began to exhibit symptoms of an egomaniac, never missing the opportunity for self-praise.
His former boss, Bombo area manager Warren French, couldn’t help but notice that oftentimes, Tecson would broadcast supposed text messages addressed to him, all flattering to him. “Kanami sang imo tingog (your voice is so nice)”, one message supposedly said. “I love you,” another supposed message said. “ka guapo sa imo (you are so handsome),” still another floated over the airlanes.
A normal person would normally shun such messages, even if indeed these were sent to him. Tecson’s behavior aroused the suspicion’s of his boss, who secretly went into the computer database after the broadcaster ended his program and searched through the text messages sent during the program.
To his surprise, there was no a single such message that massaged the ego of Tecson! He was just making it all up! He was manufacturing fictitious text messages to make it appear he has become the object of adulation among his listeners! The management of Bombo took note of this errant behavior, and this became a major factor for the eventual termination of Tecson as anchorman of the station.
His partner, Novi Guazo, suffers from the same affliction: he is constantly trying to compensate for his toad-like face by exerting every effort to sound macho and sound handsome. He never tires of self-adulation.
It didn’t take long for Bombo management to discover the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personalities lurking in these two broadcasters. And Bombo management saw that the commentaries they were making were mostly founded on lies. The survey ratings of these two began to drop precipitously, and the company’s chief executive officer, Dr. Rogelio Florete, quickly showed them the exit door.
That was how Tecson and Guazo fell from their perch as top-rated broadcasters. From the tower, they fell to the ditch, where they continue to wallow, trying ever so hard to attract listeners, but never quite succeeding in lifting the ratings of their programs. After almost two years after they were unceremoniously kicked out of Bombo, they are struggling to win back audiences. Less than 10 percent of the radio audience bother to listen to them.
Credibility is the broadcaster’s greatest asset. A broadcaster’s popularity depends heavily on this precious commodity. Those who insist on telling the truth and nothing but the truth capture the biggest share of the radio listening audience. Broadcasters like Tecson and Guazo settle for the crumbs.
This could be the reason why, no matter how hard they hit Iloilo governor Niel Tupas, often for many days on end, the latter still won by an unprecedented landslide in the 2007 local elections. It’s either an overwhelming majority of voters don’t even listen to them, or their credibility have fallen to zero such that nothing that they utter over the airlanes hardly made an impact on the decision of voters.
Tecson and Guazo have become the laughingstock of the media community as their peers found out more about the split personalities of these broadcasters. The usual trajectory of any professional’s career path is upward. In the case of Tecson and Guazo, their career paths are hurtling downwards.
When Tecson was fired from Bombo Radyo, he arrogantly predicted that it was the start of the radio network’s downfall from its position of dominance in the airlanes of Iloilo. Nearly three years have since passed since he and Novie Guazo were kicked out of Bombo, but the network seems in no danger of losing that position. Meanwhile, their new radio station continues to struggle with poor ratings, what with the poor credibility that Tecson and Guazo have brought with them to their new jobs.
There are really people who is what we call “Jerks.”