Love FM and Co. moves to new home
It’s a media house that dominates the radio dial with no less than three stations aiming for nationwide dominance. And as of today all the broadcasting entities under the direction of Rene Villanueva and family are cohabitating in a new home in Belize City. Patrick Jones reports from Slaughterhouse Road.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The new corporate headquarters will bring Love FM and all of the station’s related services: Love Entertainment, Estereo Amor, Multi Media Systems and More FM, under a single roof. Managing Director Rene Villanueva says it is a strategic move.
Rene Villanueva, Managing Director, RSV Limited
“All of them interact with each other in some way. Love FM and Estereo Amor for example are two radio stations. They need a newsroom, which we use as a news centre. So the news centre is there. The accounts department, our administration and so on needs to be close to it and not necessarily in another building. When people come they want to be in the heart of things, so there is the need to have everything.”
While all the nuts and bolts have not yet been tightened, the new RSV Media Centre has already been pressed into service. Designed by Villanueva and his son, Rene Junior, the Love FM boss has visions of making his operation the envy of broadcasters in the region. But with this modest upgrade already costing him in excess of a million dollars, Villanueva knows that achieving his goal will not be an easy task.
Rene Villanueva
“We don’t really stay still. Obviously we’ll keep on improving even on this as we have done here. Our goal is to lift the bar higher and to become the number one media centre in the Caribbean. That is our goal. We want to be recognized as being number one in the Caribbean. So it will take a while, but we’ll keep on working at it and hammering away until we get there.”
While the ground floor will house most of the offices, including the Marketing Department for all three radio stations and Love Entertainment, the middle flat will be the hub of Love FM’s broadcast operations.
Rene Villanueva
“We are in Julia’s office. And Julia is Executive Coordinator for RSV Limited. And from her office as you can see, we have a direct sight into Love FM Studio, which is next door and beyond Love FM’s studio, we can see the television studio which is where the morning show will be produced. The guests for example will no longer be seated around the regular Love FM desk, but they will be seated comfortably on sofa sets and looking more like a TV set than a radio setting.”
In all, close to sixty people will work this facility. And with a firm grip on a sizeable share of the radio market, Villanueva says it is the commitment to his listeners that pushed him to make the switch from Freetown Road to Slaughter House Road.
Rene Villanueva
“One of the main things we took into concern that caused us to really look seriously at moving was of course the roll we play in national emergencies. We realized that over the past few years when we faced hurricanes, we had Chantal, Keith, Iris and Mitch. We played a key role in coordinating the movement of people and so on, warning people as to what exactly was happening with the storm. I think we played a key role in those emergencies, so we cannot play that role and be there for people if we ourselves are not secure. So we felt that was important for us to move into a building where we don’t have to be rooting up everything whenever a hurricane threatens, and run.”
Patrick Jones, for News 5.
Villanueva says the old studio facilities on Freetown Road will revert to his family. Although he declined to name the figure, Villanueva says the acquisition of the Slaughter House Road building is the single largest investment that RSV Limited has made since its inception in 1992.
