My experience of listening to radio in Langkawi, Kedah

On 15th July 2018, I was going to travel Langkawi from Kuala Lumpur via Air Asia flight. My Langkawi trip is 3 days 2 nights.

Langkawi is very attractive destination in Kedah, Malaysia. What a beautiful island!

Initially I thought Langkawi can receive many Malaysia radio station clearly without tuning Gunung Raya local transmitter frequency, but it is wrong to claim that. Actually many areas in Langkawi could not receive radio stations from Gunung Jerai.

But I could listen to few radio stations in Langkawi such as:
* Era 90.7
* Hitz 92.4
* MY 100.1
* SINAR FM 100.9
* Raaga 101.9
* Langkawi FM 104.8
* Kedah FM 105.7 (signal is unstable)

When I was in Langkawi, I enjoyed the ocean wave at Cenang beach, also visited Kuah town, and Telaga Tujuh waterfall. In addition, I also discovered the radio reception in Langkawi.

Astro did expand selected radio stations to Langkawi since 2007 with their no.1 listenership rating in different language category, such as Era in Malay, Hitz in English, MY in Chinese and Raaga in Tamil, meanwhile Sinar (Malay) was added later. For commercial radio broadcasters, many of them did not plan to expand the coverage in Langkawi due to poor commercial value.

In my opinion, Langkawi is well known destination, a famous tourism area in Malaysia where attract many tourists around the world. For radio broadcasters, it is dependable. To me, I don't think other radio broadcasters such as Fly FM, Hot FM, Kool FM, one FM from Media Prima as well as 988 and Suria from STAR Radio will expand to Langkawi due to no commercial value, plus the listenership rating increment will not be effective much. In addition, Langkawi major local residents are Malay, most of them are favor listening to Langkawi localized radio station like RTM Langkawi FM 104.8MHz and Kedah FM 105.7MHz, meanwhile because Era, MY, Hitz, Raaga and Sinar are super well-known radio brands from Astro, therefore Astro expanded them there to target tourists actually.

For RTM, it is not necessary to expand vernacular language national radio stations such as Ai FM, Minnal FM by having frequency from Gunung Raya. For RTM Malay national radio stations, it is subjective also. Nasional FM is RTM prime Malay radio station, meanwhile Radio Klasik plays Malay nostalgic songs from 1940s till 1980s. RTM Langkawi FM 104.8MHz broadcasts 12 hours a day only, meanwhile rest of hours relay Kedah FM and prime channel Nasional FM programs. This makes duplicate perhaps Kedah FM has 105.7MHz from Gunung Raya since early time, so Langkawi FM 104.8MHz shall relay either Radio Klasik or Nasional FM programs after 7pm.

Besides 104.8Mhz, Langkawi FM has another duplicate frequency 87.5MHz where transmitted from RTM Kuah (Langkawi FM studio).

I feel partially boring to listen those radio stations in Langkawi where I can listen in Kuala Lumpur, they play the same songs over again. I'm Chinese, MY FM 100.1MHz is available in Langkawi, but I spend most of the time to listen English radio station. When come to Hitz, I feel meh as I already listen to same songs over again too anywhere.

I don't need Mix, Fly FM and Lite to expand coverage in Langkawi, they did the same thing, that's repeating same songs over again, not variety at all. Media Prima runs commercially, rather than coverage concern, meanwhile Astro did not expand Lite, Melody and Mix to Langkawi, I found their listenership ratings are not high as Hitz, ERA, SINAR and MY.

Despite RTM is government public radio broadcaster, RTM can consider to expand Traxx FM English radio station coverage in Langkawi by taking over Langkawi FM duplicate transmitter 87.5MHz and transferring to Gunung Raya. Seriously, besides Langkawi FM, RTM Traxx FM is needed in Langkawi to target local and international tourists.

==My suggestion of RTM Langkawi radio stations==
* FM 104.8MHz Gunung Raya: Langkawi FM (7am-7pm) and Nasional FM/Radio Klasik (7pm-7am)
* FM 87.5MHz Gunung Raya: Traxx FM (24 hours); by taking over Langkawi FM duplicate frequency from RTM Kuah

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