by Victoria Barker

FROM next Wednesday, latenight 98.7FM listeners will be missing a familiar voice. Radio deejay Chew Soo Wei, has resigned from the MediaCorp radio station. Was it because of bad grammar and her accent?

According to a note posted on Chew's Facebook profile on Monday, the station had been on her case over the past year for "really bad grammatical errors" made on-air. She had also been encouraged to "learn an American accent", she wrote.

Chew, 30, told my paper in a phone interview: "I speak the way I speak...but I guess (the station) has its own thing about what it wants with regard to accents."

Chew has worked at 98.7FM for 3 1/2 years, most recently hosting Pillowfight With Soo from midnight to 3am six days a week.

When contacted, MediaCorp Radio's vice-president of English programming, Ms Dahlia Zainuddin, said Chew's show was cancelled as its listenership had not been increasing, not because of her accent.

But she added: "DJs are not required to speak in a certain way, with or without accents. The fundamentals would be clear diction, proper pronunciation and good grammar."

Chew's colleague, Vanessa Fernandez, dismissed talk that Chew's English was not up to standard.

"As a DJ, speaking well is a prerequisite. That said, I don't think Soo Wei spoke badly," she said.

vbarker@sph.com.sg

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