MILESTONE | Ten years of TechSabado: From airwaves to online streams
There are moments in your career when you look back and realize that what started as a side project became a lifetime pursuit. For me, that’s TechSabado — born on a Saturday evening, Nov. 4, 2015, on RadyoSingko 92.3 News FM, when the idea of blending technology, radio, and the Filipino voice felt like uncharted territory.
TechSabado was my brainchild. Back then, I had just joined TV5’s online arm, InterAksyon.com, as its tech editor. I pitched the show to RadyoSingko as a way to bring tech journalism to the airwaves. I wanted a show that sounded less like a press briefing and more like a conversation about how technology was reshaping everyday life. I was lucky enough to share the mic with another tech journalist and longtime friend, Melvin Calimag, who was still in law school at the time. A few years later, he became Atty. Melvin Calimag, executive editor of Newsbytes.PH.
But TechSabado wasn’t my first radio experiment.The roots go back to 2001, when my good friend Mona Nieva invited me to co-host RadyoCyberPinoy on the government-run DZRM RadyoMagasin under the Philippine Information Agency. Back then, I was a tech columnist for the Manila Standard Lifestyle section under A.A. Patawaran. The show, which aired in Filipino, aimed to bring ICT news to a mass audience — something few were doing at the time. We even featured early local IT figures who would later define the Philippine tech scene. It only lasted a year, but it was groundbreaking in its own small way.
But before all this, I lived on a different frequency. I was a sound artist long before “sound art” became a tag you could put on a bio — and a punk sound tech for the legendary underground rock bars Red Rocks and Club Dredd in lower Timog. By the early ’90s, I was also an award-winning record producer and, at the same time, a road manager for some of the country’s best alternative rock bands — back when recording meant splicing tape and the endless roads were pure rock ’n’ roll in form and soul.
That was a totally different life. But I was, foremost, a journalist. Storytelling was the constant — whether through words on the pages of Jingle Music Magazine, Psi-Com and The Manila Chronicle or editing my very own underground Xerox-zine rag called Red Racket with Magyar Tuason; radio waves, or feedback loops. So when the microphone light went red for TechSabado, it wasn’t unfamiliar territory. It was just another way of composing a story — this time with questions instead of synthesizers and effects boxes.
Nonetheless, that short stint with DZRM opened doors. Soon after, I was invited by college schoolmate and veteran broadcast journalist Patrick Paez to join The Evening News on ABC 5 (the pre-TV5 era), anchored by Martin Andanar, Cherie Mercado, and the late Amelyn Veloso. I became their in-house tech critic, showing the latest gadgets on-air while explaining what they actually did — a novelty back then. Around that time, I was already the tech editor of The Manila Times, where Dante “Klink” Ang trusted me to handle the Tech Times section.
Alongside social critic Lourd de Veyra and political columnist Conrado de Quiros, we were part of a nightly lineup that tried to make sense of the day’s chaos in one-minute bursts. It was a good run until 2010, when the MVP Group took over ABC 5 and rebranded it as TV5.
In mid-2011, I joined InterAksyon.com, TV5’s online news website under Roby Alampay. Lourd, now a TV5 mainstay and for the reason we now work in the same broadcast station, often invited me to guest on his early evening RadyoSingko program. With TV5 news anchors Shawn Yao and MJ Marfori, along with fellow InterAksyon editor Boojie Basilio, our crew made the weekday evening airwaves sound like a mix of newsroom banter and bar talk — with beer and sisig on the side.
That was when I started feeling comfortable behind the microphone again. Eventually, I proposed a tech show to RadyoSingko. The late Gladys Lucas, then station manager, was hesitant. She didn’t think I was ready to host my own show. Fair enough.
Around that time, friends Aileen Intia of Asahi Shimbun and Maricel Burgonio — then a colleague with The Manila Times and later also joined News5 — were involved with the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ DWDD radio station. Station manager Maj. Mike Aquino (now Col. Aquino) welcomed us to produce our own programs. That was in 2012.
Melvin and partner in crime Marlon Magtira hosted Newsbytes on Air. I, meanwhile, hosted a late-Sunday post-punk music show with Children of Cathode Ray co-member the late Magyar as co-host. It was there, in that modest military studio inside Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City, that Melvin and I honed our rhythm and timing — skills that would later define TechSabado’s sound.
By 2015, the stars aligned. I pitched TechSabado again to RadyoSingko, this time with help from assistant station manager Cherry Bayle. Gladys finally gave me the break I’d been waiting for, with the approval of then–News5 chief Luchi Cruz Valdez. The timing was right, but the available slots were limited — early Sunday morning or Saturday evening. Naturally, I picked Saturday, right before Lourd’s late-night weekend gig, Chillax.
And so, on Nov. 4, 2015, TechSabado went live. Our first guest was our good friend Winthrop Yu from the Philippine Internet Society, a civil society group advocating for better digital access. From then on, every Saturday became a deep dive into the ICT world — gadgets, government policy, cybercrime, broadband, startups, and everything in between.
Of course, a show needs a home — an archive, a front page, and a commons. That’s where TechSabado.com came in. The site is our official hub, supporting the weekly stream and carrying daily reporting across tech news, business, telecom, gadgets, mobility, and work. On social, the Facebook page functions as our community park — announcing guests, reposting episodes, and keeping the conversation live around the week’s topics.
TechSabado.com also houses original columns and special features — reportage and analysis that go deeper than what a segment window allows. We’re not chasing the new for its own sake. We’re mapping the systems that determine who gets included — and who gets left behind. Yet we never saw ourselves as “tech experts,” but rather as tech journalists.
By 2017, Smart Communications came on board as the sponsor of our news website, helping us advance our mission of bringing tech literacy to the masses. Their support gave us both the resources and the confidence we needed — and, of course, a lifeline for the talk show.
Then came 2020. The pandemic lockdown hit hard. TV5 went through a massive restructuring that shuttered many of its scheduled programs, including those in RadyoSingko. TechSabado — then on its fifth year — was one of the casualties.
But Melvin and I refused to fade into the static. We pivoted online, streaming via Facebook and YouTube. It was a leap of faith, but our loyal listeners followed. And, importantly, Smart Communications stayed with us, continuing their sponsorship through the digital shift. That support kept us alive.
Around this time, my friend Mario Benipayo — through his company, Forerunner Technologies, the local distributor of Mackie, RCF, and other pro audio equipment — provided all the hardware we needed to stream our shows online.
Also during the long lockdown, we experimented with side shows: In Between, a podcast featuring industry executives, and Today Is Tuesday, a laid-back talk show I co-hosted with veteran journalist Raymund “Tribs” Tribdino, now The Manila Times sci-tech editor.
Now, 10 years later, TechSabado stands as the country’s longest-running tech talk show. What started as a Saturday experiment has become a weekly ritual for Filipino techies, journalists, and ordinary listeners curious about how the digital world shapes their daily lives.
As I reflect on this milestone, I can only feel grateful — to Melvin, Lourd, Roby, Patrick, Ms. Gladys, Ms. Luchi, Klink Ang, Bess Zamora, Manny de los Reyes, Col. Mike, Sir Mon Isberto, our executive producers at Dominguez Marketing Communications Inc., to our guests, listeners, co-hosts, and staff, and to Smart Communications for their continuing support. To this day, we remain driven by the same mission we started with: to make technology accessible, understandable, and, hopefully, empowering for everyone.
Here’s to another decade of stories, circuits, and Saturday nights. And may technology — with all its quirks and contradictions — continue to help us build a better tomorrow.
————————————————————————-
WATCH TECHSABADO ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL:
WATCH OUR OTHER YOUTUBE CHANNELS:
PLEASE LIKE our FACEBOOK PAGE and SUBSCRIBE to OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
PLEASE LIKE our FACEBOOK PAGE and SUBSCRIBE to OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
