Eric Cheng, senior radio programme producer and presenter at Commercial Radio.
Age: 30.
Career path: I majored in communication studies at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, where I also produced and hosted a two-hour multilingual college radio programme. For two months in 1990, I worked as an intern at Commercial Radio and after graduating in 1994, I returned to the station, working as a DJ during the midnight hours. I became a production assistant six months later, which meant a lot of menial administrative work: returning calls, setting up interviews, investigative reporting and so forth. In November, 1995, I created my own entertainment news programme, What A Wonderful World. Two and a half years on, I host the three-hour show with Simon Siu and Lai Hoi-Shan five days a week, and it has become very successful.
Eric's day: I get to the station at 10 am and begin reviewing tapes and records. I will also search the Internet for any useful material and confirm appointments with the guests. I take a break for lunch, and then start the programme at 1 pm.
In the first hour of the programme, we read out bizarre stories and ask the audience to call in to guess which piece is fact and which is fiction. The second hour is a variation of the first, in that we ask listeners multiple choice questions on trivia. This requires a lot of background research. In the third hour, we interrogate celebrities on how they would act in different scenarios which would bring their morals into question. We also bring in experts to discuss various strange phenomenons. And we play the latest Canto-pop all through the show.
Afterwards, we take a brief coffee break. A lot of celebrities appear on the programme, so the three of us spend the rest of the day setting up appointments. It's not difficult, but it is time-consuming.
