Relishing her return to radio
“My mouth hurts! It’s been four hours,” says Tracy Holsinger. It’s 10 a.m. and inside the TNL studio on 5th Lane, Holsinger is wrapping up ‘Wake Up with Tracy.’ It’s been a slightly more challenging show than usual – she forgot to email herself her notes and has been forced to improvise. Fortunately, an untidy stack of newspapers in the corner of her desk provides rich inspiration. Then there are segments, like the song she wrote about politicians crossing over to the opposition, that she already has prepared. On the latter, she has music and even backing vocalists – her voice soars above them both, making up for minor failings in pitch with major irreverence.
Holsinger’s return to radio has been greeted with pleasure by fans who remember her from TNL’s morning show back in 2003. She rebooted her show on July 23, 2015 – the day TNL celebrated 22 years on air. The limp orange balloons and gorilla in a party hat still in her studio are a reminder that she’s only been back a short time.
Holsinger first signed up to be an RJ in the late 90s. She was a new graduate with a degree in Drama and Theatre Arts was from Goldsmiths College, University of London under her belt. She originally joined Sun FM, (“‘Nothing survives without it’ is one of my lines”) before moving to TNL. When she left radio it was to take up steadier work as a teacher.
Now at 41, Holsinger is a mother of two and the artistic director of the Mind Adventures Theatre Company. That she wanted a job that allowed for more time with her children, and daytime instead of night-time rehearsals with Mind Adventures, helped her drum up the courage to return to radio. “Once in a while you take that big step into the unknown. For me this is a year to just see what I can do.”
In its first iteration, her morning show was decidedly political – “I used to slam everybody,” she says unrepentantly. In fact, she wrote so many songs about Chandrika Kumaratunga Bandaranaike’s government that she had enough for an album. Now Holsinger isn’t entirely certain that her audience is ready for her brand of RJ but she’s still keen on creating a show that’s intelligent and engaging. For her “the ultimate aim is to have a show that is absolutely local…something dealing with local issues, what’s relevant to us.” Holsinger is upfront about her agenda in the very title of her show: ‘Wake up With Tracy’ isn’t just a literal suggestion but a metaphorical promise.
If there aren’t too many RJs on local English radio with similar ambitions, Holsinger isn’t surprised but she feels that the political context has changed enough in recent months that she can tap into new spaces of expression: “I haven’t been on air these last ten years, and I don’t know that I could have had the show I wanted to have without some serious harassment. I think that has made people cautious and nervous, but the very fact that I am going on air and saying these things now, I think it symbolises a huge change for Sri Lanka. That we no longer have to be so scared, it doesn’t mean that the corruption and all that stuff will end overnight but at least we can talk without fear of a white van coming and taking us off.”
After years in a classroom, Holsinger is relishing the challenge she has set herself. In particular, she’s enjoying her re-immersion in politics. She’s taken a step in that direction by putting together a roster of guests to motivate people into voting in the upcoming elections – individuals like Ragi Kadirgamar who came on her show to talk about the non-partisan initiative Get up + Vote and Niran Anketell who gave her listeners a crash course in federalism.
In between the serious interviews, Holsinger delivers a mix of movie and music reviews, news updates, human interest stories, celebrity gossip and pithy social commentary. The day I’m in the studio she takes a minute to register her revulsion of the word ‘spinster’ and how unfavourably it compares with the term ‘bachelor’.
Even an RJ as popular as she is has had to deal with some measure of sexism, from being told that she should have a male co-anchor because having to listen to a woman’s voice for the entirety of the show would put off listeners to listeners wanting to know how her job “affects your duties as a mother.” (Holsinger’s response to the second was that her husband got their children ready for school, which she says provoked another round of sexism.) “Changing attitudes is a big thing. Over 50% of this country is women. Just the way that women are treated…I want to change, as much as possible, attitudes toward women in this country.”
In radio, Holsinger has found a medium that reaches a wide and diverse audience. “Talk radio is something I want to bring back. I think it’s a very powerful medium. Once your listeners get to know and trust you, it’s really great.” She knows though that she still has a way to go before she can realise her grandest ambitions. “My reservations are that I am not good enough yet, and that I don’t know my audience well enough yet,” says Holsinger. But if she’s certain of anything, it’s of this: “It has to be fabulous. That’s what I am working toward.”