WEFM Radio 99.9 is today celebrating its 21st anniversary as a leading broadcasting entity here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
WEFM radio-a privately-owned radio station was founded in April 1997.
Located at Lower Questelles, WEFM Radio is owned by Mr. Julius Williams who is the Managing Director, with Ms. Susan DeFreitas as Operations Manager. There is currently a fulltime staff of seven persons and four part time employees.
Managing Director of WEFM, Julius Williams said that despite several challenges, including the advent of social media, WEFM has still been able to maintain its market share and remain a relevant and viable option for many persons wishing to access entertainment, news, and information on issues pertaining to social and national development.
“Starting off 21 years ago we were catering for a middle aged group, maybe 25-years-old and up. These 25-year-old people are now twenty-one (21) years older, so the kids who we weren’t necessarily catering for at that time, we now have to cater for them and we still have to maintain the audience that we had originally.”
“So the musicians, the DJs, the announcers, the news editors have to be more focused now, bearing in mind that we are catering for people who were listening to us 21 years ago and still now have to cater for people who just start listening to us, who just turned age 20. That could be challenging so everybody has to be a lil more focused on what they are doing,” said Mr. Williams.
He said management continues to seek ways to further improve the technology utilized by WEFM radio.
In commenting on the way forward, Mr. Williams noted that WEFM will be placing greater emphasis on developing its social media techniques, so as to ensure that the radio station remains both current and relevant, in this rapidly changing technological environment.
At the same time Mr. Williams stressed that the transmission of accurate, credible information will always remain a hallmark of WEFM radio.
“The competition with social media it’s growing so fast that it would be very challenging; so we have challenging days ahead. But we are also leaning towards developing our social media techniques to be competitive in that area, and would still maintain the accuracy and the credibility of information transmitted,” said the Managing Director.
Mr. Williams added that “we try to maintain a news room where our information presented to the public would always be reputable and most credible. That’s where we are going to make a difference. The information that you get from WEFM you can take it and go with it without a doubt. And that will always be the case, we would never compromise that.”
To mark its 21st anniversary, WEFM earlier today presented an award of recognition to Mr. St. Clair Scott, for his 20 years of dedicated service to WEFM.
Mr. Scott, who volunteers his time and energy to this radio station, is the host of the “Sunday Cruise” programme that is aired every Sunday from 6pm-10pm here on WEFM.
