‘Level 1’, the radio program dedicated to spreading Asian pop culture in Guayaquil

Create a radio program “by and for” the fandom, groups of people who associate with each other based on their taste for a movie, a series, a comic, or a musical artist. That was the idea of ​​Carlos Oyola, host of the program, and three of his friends in 1999 to create Level 1, focused on the fandoms of Asian pop culture products. Thus, Oyola frequently receives fans of Japanese anime and manga sagas, from k-pop (South Korean music genre), video games, tokusatsu (Japanese TV dramas characterized by the use of special effects) and so on.

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The idea for the program was born in 1999, but it did not see the light of day until 2002. At that time, Oyola recounts, the fandoms they were niche. Now it is a market. The industry of kpop in South Korea, for example, it posted revenue of more than $5 trillion in 2019. Its popularity isn’t limited to the South Korean borders, though: according to a study conducted in 18 countries by the statistics company Statista39% of the participants indicated that the kpop He was very popular in his country. Another example is Australia, where the market research company fiftyfive5 estimates that the industry fandoms worth $4.3 trillion.

The show, which was originally called ‘Japanipop’, ran from 2002 to 2010, with a short hiatus from 2005 to 2007, and then had a long hiatus from 2010 to 2017, when it returned to air on radio. WQ. After the pandemic, the production company was renamed Japanipop and the show itself was rebranded as Level 1, in an attempt to capture more audiences, especially fans of video games and k-pop.

“Before, the media saw them as urban tribes,” Oyola explains about the fandomswhich adds that little by little, at the beginning of the 2000s, some journalists “took a risk” to cover the phenomenon of otaku, a word used in the West to describe the most die-hard fans of Japanese anime and manga. According to Oyola, another factor that contributed to the rise of the consumption of Asian popular culture in Ecuador was the decision of some national channels to broadcast anime, such as dragonball Y Knights of the Zodiac.

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Oyola also points to the power of Asian popular culture as an “escape” for young people: “We live in a time in which many young people, according to cultural precepts, are not well regarded because of the way they dress,” he stresses. Oyola. “Many of the boys and girls that I have interviewed when I ask them why they like the kpop, They always tell me that it is because it helped them get out of a depression, that the musical themes helped them at the moment they needed that boost.

Oyola itself belongs to fandoms. He is an active member of the Guayaquil Comic Club and the Mandalorian Mercs Death Watch Clan (fans of Star Wars) and Tokusatsu Guayaquil. In addition to being a radio host, Oyola is also a creative advertising illustrator.

Level 1 It is on the air every Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on radio R 98.1 FM in Guayas and Santa Elena, and on 94.5 FM in Manabí. (AND)