FOR OMAR BATEESHA, the father of ever-popular radio program Shahed ala El-Asr (A Witness to the Times), “Radio guests are all walking closets. A good presenter should walk around with a key ring. Each key fits a certain personality and opens up its little secrets. You have to be genuinely interested in your guest, be engaged, challenged. You can’t be shy. You should confront him about what has been said or written about him, negatively or positively, stir up some heat, but never start a fire.

“I really hate it when the host becomes so aggressive, so hateful, in order to provoke his guest. It’s distasteful.”

Bateesha’s guests have been recording their own oral histories since the program started in January 1983 and the host has a wealth of anecdotes to recount. “I keep remembering Eng. Sedki Soliman, a former prime minister, who after recording for 25 minutes decided to stop and that was that. I explained that he was scheduled to last for an hour, but he told me, ‘No, that’s enough! I already said what I wanted to say.’ I didn’t air the episode.

“As presenters, we’ve learned how to deal with different kinds of guests, how to push those who avoid your questions into feeling obliged to answer them. The best guests are those who speak freely without interruption, for they usually volunteer information they may not give if you ask them about it. Later, they come asking you to delete certain parts, sensing that they got carried away,” he says.

Unlike Amal Fahmy, Bateesha exported his program to the TV, where it attracted a flock of imitators on Arab satellite channels. Some ripped off the program in its entirety, while others adopted the title, content or spirit.

How does he feel about the experience?

“Not comfortable. Television never felt like home. When I hold the microphone, I feel like a knight riding his horse. But the TV? I’m just a cog in a machine that’s run by directors, assistants, cameramen and people who’re waving to you all the time, giving you instructions,” he says. “In the middle of a discussion, they can easily stop you to change the tape, and unlike the radio, where in a second the tape is replaced, this one can take up to 25 minutes. I used to forget where I stopped, and the heat of the moment is lost, frozen in time. Besides, you have to stay true to the same clothes, the same stature and décor, etc.

“Let’s put it this way: Television isn’t my cup of tea.”

Appointed head of ERTU’s radio division in March 2001, Bateesha was forced to discontinue work on his program and replay old episodes because he had a mountain of problems to deal with, foremost among them overdue fiscal and administrative reforms.

“The newspapers used to write about the long queues in Maspero waiting for their paychecks, just like they write about the breadlines nowadays. Radio people used to complain they hadn’t been paid for months and would camp out on the financial controller’s office doorstep. That’s why I restructured the salary ceiling, whereby the big fish wouldn’t get the whole cake, applying it to myself so that no one would come and complain. Then, I squeezed our expenditures. I decreed that no recording of songs or drama would be allowed without my personal approval. Some saw me as a dictator, accusing me of wanting to dominate the production sector. I just wanted to be sensible. You can’t leave people to do what they want without supervision.”

Bateesha’s plan worked. As the radio division began cutting waste and paying salaries on time, it suddenly found it had funds available to invest in high-quality dramas and songs. In the last two years, ERTU has produced some 35 songs, some of which have won regional awards; its radio soaps have also won gold medals at local festivals.

In fact, perhaps as many as 90 percent of the radio soaps have been turned into television serials or movies, among them Bent Affandina, Mabrouk Galak Qalaq and Meshwar Bondoq, to name a recent few.

It was also under Bateesha that the preservation of rare recordings became an issue. The voices of King Farouk, former presidents Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, feminist Hoda Shaarawi and journalists Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, among others, called out for help from the eighth floor of Maspero, where they were kept in a poorly ventilated store room

Championing the cause, and warning of the imminent threat to the precious radio heritage, was Samia Abdel Mageed, host of Recordings from the Past. Abdel Mageed searched extensively for the needles required to replay records. She demanded that the priceless cultural heritage be moved to a properly ventilated and secured storage area —and digitized for storage on DVD, CD and other electronic media.

Bateesha was listening.

“We started a project to restore them and began transferring the old recordings onto electronic media as well as our computer system, making sure we had good copies. We restored around a third of the radio records in our library. But it will take years, there are thousands of them. The new head of the radio is enthusiastic to finish what we started.”

(That new head is Inas Gohar, who rescheduled confirmed interviews over a period of two months before ultimately cancelling her last appointment to speak just three days before this magazine went to press.)

But it wasn’t only the future of rare recordings that was on the line. The international service, which broadcasts content in some 37 African and Asian languages, was in even more danger. ERTU’s international service was born in 1951, with a daily half-hour short-wave broadcast to Indonesia a few years after its independence and the election of its first president. Gradually, the stations came to play a role in teaching the Arabic language and the true essence of Islam to listeners in Somalia, Nigeria, India and Southeast Asia. Many historians have claimed the international service played a role in fostering the sense of community that led to the 1955 Bandung Conference at which Nasser, Nehru, Sukharno and Tito laid the foundation of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Soon after coming to office, Bateesha says, he found plans were in the works to slash 25 languages from the international service while cutting its total programing hours from 71 a day to just 20.

“These stations have a significant economic and political role,” Bateesha says. “They help Egypt keep its friends. We talk day and night about the need to communicate with ‘the other,’ to rectify misconceptions, while we plead that we shut down some of these lines of channels to cut expenses. The budget of just one TV soap is more than that for the entire international service. Besides, what about those who work for these stations? Shall we send them home? I really fought the move, and I hope the new leadership keeps it the way it is.”

Among his many achievements, Bateesha is perhaps most proud of his comprehensive themed campaigns.

“There were 15 of them. Each campaign adopted a certain name, and all our stations propagated the theme according to its own style, for a whole week. It was very popular with the audience, such as Hetaf El-Samteen (The Screams of the Silent) whereby we analyzed the graffiti people write on walls, public transports, fences, etc. and explore its implications as a form of public expression.”

While those features have now ended, Bateesha has begun a different sort of campaign: support for the next generation of radio hosts. He believes old-timers are reluctant to admit and accept emerging talents.

“As time goes by, the old names become sort of untouchable,” he says, “but we have to understand that every age brings its different talents, tastes and ways of expression. There are many radio stations, many voices.”

Still, he does admit that heading a testing committee is a disappointing experience. “Special talents are rare, and unless the voice is special and unique, they can pass unnoticed,” says Bateesha. “Bear in mind that the intellectual level of the graduates who apply to work for the radio is really shocking — be it language-wise or general knowledge — a complete disaster. We enroll them in training sessions, as well as the Radio and TV Institute, but still they can’t be turned into stars overnight. If you have someone with 1 percent talent, all your effort can do is to push him to 5 percent, and that’s an accomplishment.”

The audience has changed as well, he suggests. “The pillar upon which the radio started its work in 1934 was to offer entertaining culture — and cultured entertainment. My generation learned that by heart from the older generation. We still perform our task, but people aren’t following up as they used to. There’s a whole network called the Culture Network, which includes four stations, among which is the Cultural Programming Station aimed mainly at intellectuals, those we call white-collar. It covers international plays, cultural events and classical music. But it’s not as strong as it used to be, not only because of engineering factors, but also due to social change. The nature of the audience has changed. Before, culture was more celebrated, people used to attend more exhibitions and cultural events. Today, they’re more concerned with the daily struggle for survival.”

To engage their audiences, Bateesha believes radio employees should focus more on understanding the nature of their own medium.

“The radio has its advantages and disadvantages. If we focus on the advantages, we’ll get better. Take, for example, airing a football match. Undoubtedly, the TV is more suitable as a medium because you can see the players, the referees, the game actually being played. The radio has only the voice of the anchor describing the game, yet the radio can attract more listeners by providing analysis that enriches the game, uncovering events behind the scenes that TV can’t unveil. Television only records the game, but the radio can interview the players and the coach before the game. You can still score points in the competition.”

One of the scoops Bateesha takes pride in is his recent phone interview with President Hosni Mubarak, in which they discussed for the first time the issue of inheriting power — a topic that no one dared talk openly about before, paving the road for other media to discuss it.

“The radio is here to stay. Since the early 1980s, we’ve been hearing that no one listens to the radio anymore, that the TV has taken over its role. Still, radio remains not only in our cars, but in our houses, on satellite channels and on the internet. Egyptian Radio put up a website in January and its visitors are in the millions. If international companies make a point to include a radio service in their new tech toys, like mobiles, how can we undermine its strength?

“It’s simple: At first, the radio had the whole audience, the whole cake. Now, satellite channels, TV and the internet have come to claim their shares. All media have really good appetites, and no digestion problems. We want to swallow you — the audience — alive.” et