Shut up and listen

By Mak Mun San
Publisher:The Straits Times - Publication Date: 24-12-2007

Do not mess with deejay Wong Woon Hong.
Better known as Huang Wenhong, the programme and promotions director of Mandarin station Radio 100.3 has an attitude which is as uncompromising as his dagger-tongued reputation.
Once, a popular Hong Kong singer-actor, whom we'll call C, was scheduled to appear live on his show at 6pm.
C was an hour late, and the reason given by the movie company minder was that they were stuck in traffic.
"But my friend at a rival station told me that C was delayed because he was recording some jingles there," says the Malaysia-born Wong, who is a Singapore permanent resident.
"Can you imagine how angry I was? I'd already announced to the whole world that C would be coming, but no one even bothered to call to say they would be late. My station is small, but you can't bully us like this."
Radio 100.3, which is owned by SPH Multimedia and NTUC Media Cooperative, is ranked fourth out of the five Chinese radio stations here.
It lags behind MediaCorp's YES 93.3FM, Love 97.2FM and Capital 95.8FM.
As there was another programme slated to start at 7pm, Wong informed the minder that C could not go on air. Instead, he ushered them to another studio to do a recorded interview with another deejay.
"Then I threw it away," he says, still looking decidedly defiant as he relates the 2001 incident.
It is no coincidence that the name of this deejay's morning radio show, which he co-hosts with Ye Limei, is Don't Give A Damn!.
No qualms telling people off
Wong, 36, is as provocative as they come.
He has just finished his morning shift and we are chatting in his office in Toa Payoh North. He shows no signs of fatigue as he rattles on in Mandarin for almost three hours, not stopping once to take a sip of water.
And this man does not simply talk. He fires non-stop like a cassette tape stuck in fast-forward mode.
"I've already slowed down a lot for you," he says, laughing.
You notice that there is a piece of cake on his desk and ask if that is his breakfast.
Shrugging, he replies that it came courtesy of one of the big bosses.
"I told my colleague that it would be more practical if he gave us some money instead of just a piece of cake," he says.
Would he say that to the boss' face?
He shoots back without thinking: "Why not? It's true, don't you think?"
Wong, in case you haven't noticed, is someone who does not mince his words, on and off air.
Case in point: He was in the news recently for telling a listener to 'shut up' when the latter sent him five SMSes to tell him to stop being so 'hao lian' (Hokkien for arrogant).
He also told her to listen to another radio station instead.
With a soft sigh, he says: 'Perhaps my English is not too good, but to me, 'shut up' is not an offensive term. I tell my friends to shut up all the time.'
And by his own admission, he has already toned down a lot since the incident involving C. 'I was too emotional then,' he acknowledges with a nod.
Now, if a celebrity does not turn up on time, he says, he would still plug that person's song accordingly.
"I've learnt over the years that there is no need to go to extremes."
Even so, he admits he has no qualms about telling people off if he feels they have no respect for him.
For example, when a client asked if he could 'sound like (Capital 95.8FM deejay) Ong Teck Chon' during a voice-over job, he told that person bluntly to 'go look for Teck Chon'.
Wong does smack of arrogance, but he is one of the rare individuals who are able to do it with such flair that you find yourself admiring his guts rather than being put off by him.
It helps that apart from his professionalism--which he is fiercely proud of even though he says he is worth only 60 marks out of 100--he does not take himself too seriously.
Off duty, he allows his endearing Malaysian accent to creep into the conversation, which is equivalent to a deejay from an English station speaking Singlish in private.
But if you take it as a sign of slackness, you are wrong.
The self-confessed workaholic is one of the most hardworking in the business. In fact, that is the reason he cites for the failure of a three-year relationship which ended this year.
"I used to be really crazy. When I went to Hong Kong on holiday, I'd stay in the hotel room all day and listen to the radio," he says.
"When I'm in Tokyo, I'd go to these outdoor studios and stare at the deejays for hours. I don't understand Japanese, but I can learn a lot from their body language and their tone of voice."
omy editor and My Paper associate editor Chua Chim Kang, 42, feels that Wong is the most creative and quick-witted deejay in Singapore.
"It's not easy for someone like him to find a stage that he can thrive in," notes Chua, who appears regularly on Wong's talk shows.
"This is not the largest stage he can find, but he will not give up on what he believes in just to have a bigger space."
Big fish in a small pond
Born on July 27, 1971, in Kluang, Johor, he is the youngest of six children of chicken sellers.
His parents retired about nine years ago and still live in Malaysia. He lives alone in a condominium apartment in Sembawang.
As a child, he was very naughty at home but a model pupil in school.
From a young age, he would rise at about six in the morning to help out at his parents' shop, collecting money from the customers.
"I met all sorts of people and learnt what to say and do to please them," he says.
When he went to secondary school and pre-university, his grades suffered as he was too involved in extra-curricular activities like basketball and drama society.
"I was the worst student in the best class," he recalls, grinning.
To make matters worse, he hated science but chose the science stream anyway because "all my friends took science and arts was for girls only".
Friends have always played an important role in his life.
"I value friendship so much that if my friend came to my house and my mother prepared just one bowl of soup, I'd refuse to drink it," he says.
When he was 19, he left Malaysia to study in Taiwan's National Chengchi University, majoring in journalism.
It was there that he honed his leadership and people skills, after he was picked as the representative of his cohort of overseas students.
During his third year, he started working part-time in a local radio station, doing what he loved best--reading the news.
He could speak only Malaysian-accented Mandarin then but the Taiwanese did not mind as they found it to be "full of character".
"They didn't want standard Mandarin as it was associated with mainland China," he explains.
A few months before he graduated, he applied to be a deejay with MediaCorp Radio and flew to Singapore three times on his own expense for the written test, voice test and interview.
His investment paid off. He got the job, despite not knowing who Singapore's Transport Minister was, a question which came up in the written test.
He started his career in Capital 95.8FM in 1995, swiftly making a name for himself as the deejay with the motormouth and a wit to match.
In 2000, he won the Best Roving Report DJ prize at the Golden Mike Awards, but quit a year later. He then did part-time work at YES 93.3FM for half a year.
"I had a feeling Anna would look for me," he says of his decision to leave, referring to Radio 100.3's vice-president Anna Lim, 46.
She had also left MediaCorp for the new station, which was then called UFM 100.3.
Sure enough, she approached him and he crossed over.
But the straight-talking Wong is the first to tell you that things have not been plain sailing since Day One.
In the first two years, he even broke down and cried twice when he was overwhelmed by the workload.
Then there have been the constant struggles against what he sees as prejudiced treatment from record and movie companies.
"I've been bullied for six years. People don't treat us with respect because we're not the big boys," he says. "It's a very, very lousy feeling."
However, being in a relatively small station has its advantages. He has the freedom to say no to advertisers, something he knows he might not be able to do if he was working somewhere else.
According to Lim, he has entertained thoughts of resigning almost every year.
"All I can say is he has really given everything to this station. No one can ask any more from him that he hasn't already done," she says.
He admits he has often wondered if it is time for him to leave to make way for younger deejays, and that he is still "at a crossroads".
"I'm not sure if I'm slowing down the pace at which this station is growing," he says, adding that he does not rule out returning to Malaysia one day to help his sister run her metal hardware business.
But will his loyal listeners be tuning in to him on a different frequency, that of a rival station's, one day?
It is anyone's guess, it seems.
Yes, his former employer has approached him several times, but his answer has been the same: "I'll leave only when our ratings go up."
He gives a wry smile, amused by the irony of his own reply.

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its weird in NYC shut up is something you dont say kindly even in passing.

But when I was in the south the term was used lightly among the people I was with.

They use the term like "ohshutup" like to say "yourekidding"

I was like dude...if you say shut up to someone even kiddingly in NYC they are liable to shoot you or worse.

right - or "shut your mouth!" Unless it was coming from my grandma, then it was definitely SHUT....YOUR...MOUTH and the only correct reply was "yes ma'am!!"

Really? Stacy from TLC's What not to Wear says "Shutup" all the time, it's her trademark. She's definately a New Yorker.

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