Laterna
Laterna is a musical radio documentary in Turkish language produced and narrated by Özge Ersu, a professional tourist guide, travel writer, musician, radio programmer and documentary director. The theme of Laterna is about music composed for places, cities and countries.
Laterna was broadcast by Ntv Radyo Türkiye between 2008 and 2014, a Turkish thematic news and culture channel. Episodes were typically broadcast at drive time 15:10 every Saturday until 15:55, rescheduling on Sundays at 17:10, although the Sunday repeat sometimes switched to 03:00 on Mondays.
Beginnings
's close ties with public radio began on 2008 in London while on tour when he met Ahmet Yeşiltepe, a successful Turkish journalist and anchorman of Ntv Radio and Television. Under Yeşiltepe's supervision, a very popular disc-jockey, composer and sound engineer Selami Bilgiç was assigned among Ntv radio's staff as the senior technical editor of the program.After a brief experimentary broadcast for London, Paris and Rome, Özge Ersu has rapidly established a brand-new concept on Ntv Radio,focusing on the music composed for historic events, places, cities and musicians of mentioned places. During the first two years of the program's history, this novelty city-based template was later stretched to countrywide programs such as Switzerland, Norway, Cuba, Iceland and similar.
Audience and success
Since then, Laterna has become one of public radio's most successful documentary musical radio programs at Turkish broadcasting history, targeting only a very high intellectual level of audience. The program, being one of the forerunners of its own genre, quickly received a warm welcome and enjoyed extensive success. Özge Ersu, himself a laureate lyric writer an amateur blues drummer is widely known for his laudable usage of the Turkish language, as well as his extensive musical and historical knowledge on Blues, Jazz and Old School Rock, Pop, Classical and Turkish music, that contributed to this achievement.Having a very large number of fans from Turkey and all around the world from different profiles, the audience involves teachers, musicians, students, executives as well as housewives and children.
Awards and accolades
Laterna is widely considered as the Most Favourite Radio Program of Turkey among the radio audience, the program fans and followers.Laterna has twice been the candidate for prestigious Sedat Simavi Radio Awards in 2009 and 2011.
Laterna has received ‘Tureb 2011 Sustainable Broadcast Success Award acquiring the first place by far in open vote polls.
TUREB, The National Federation of Tourist Guide Guilds and Associations has presented the award to Özge Ersu at the World Tourist Guides Day Ceremony held on February 21, 2012 'at İstanbul Haliç Congress Center. Click for the video of the Awards Ceremony.
Laterna has been awarded Kalid Crystal Gull 2012, assigned by Kalid.
Content
Besides the informative narration, interesting facts, impressions and the memoirs of Özge Ersu, each of the broadcast twenty-five programs comprise songs, poems and essays for the subject matter. The content also involves interviews with well-known historical figures, famous stars and celebrities, created by Özge Ersu's self-conversations that require intricate recording capabilities using detailed sound processing sessions, morphing techniques and studio effects.The program is also backed up by an imaginary time-traveller correspondent that reports important historical or musical events, joining the radio broadcast live, with an old-style cellular phone on a low-debit connection.
Episodes
Throughout Laterna's history going back to four years, Özge Ersu has created and narrated total of twenty-five legendary programs with a total of around 35 hours runtime. The list of programs, broadcast dates and running times are listed below.| Cue | Program | Broadcast Date | Runtime | Cue | Program | Broadcast Date | Runtime | |
| 1 | October 2008 | 00:45′:09″ | 14 | January 2010 | 02:59′:23″ | |||
| 2 | November 2008 | 00:47′:26″ | 15 | February 2010 | 01:43′:09″ | |||
| 3 | December 2008 | 00:46′:56″ | 16 | September 2010 | 01:33′:36″ | |||
| 4 | January 2009 | 00:49′:51″ | 17 | December 2010 | 01:07′:53″ | |||
| 5 | February 2009 | 00:46′:18″ | 18 | April 2011 | 01:08′:59″ | |||
| 6 | March 2009 | 00:46′:19″ | 19 | May 2011 | 01:17′:56″ | |||
| 7 | April 2009 | 00:44′:42″ | 20 | September 2011 | 02:06′:21″ | |||
| 8 | April 2009 | 01:05′:58″ | 21 | March 2012 | 00:52′:56″ | |||
| 9 | June 2009 | 01:21′:12″ | 22 | March 2012 | 00:54′:45″ | |||
| 10 | July 2009 | 01:43′:20″ | 23 | April 2012 | 01:24′:20″ | |||
| 11 | August 2009 | 01:25′:45″ | 24 | May 2012 | 02:55′:33″ | |||
| 12 | September 2009 | 01:22′:58″ | 25 | May 2012 | 00:45′:39″ | |||
| 13 | November 2009 | 02:36′:46″ | - | - | - | - |
Podcasts
All broadcast podcasts are available for streaming, and downloading at .Cast
Besides Özge Ersu as the presenter, producer and narrator, Laterna cast at Ntv Radio included Selami Bilgiç as the master technical editor, supported by the broadcast engineer Ufuk Tangel and radio director Safiye Kılıç between 2008 and 2014.Musicians
Jazz, blues, rock, classic and pop artists, singers and groups include, but not limited to:Ella Fitzgerald
Frank Sinatra
Pink Floyd
Dean Martin
Lando Fiorini
Lucio Dalla
Dany Brillant
Luciano Pavarotti
Enrico Macias
Édith Piaf
Yves Montand
Michel Sardou
Joe Dassin
Charles Aznavour
Julio Iglesias
Carlos Gardel
Mariza Amália Rodrigues
Mercedes Sosa
José Feliciano
Compay Segundo
Jethro Tull
Johann Strauss II
François Feldman
Paul Simon
Art Garfunkel
Del Shannon
Alexandrov Ensemble
Boney M
Cozy Powell
Andy Williams
Eberhard Weber
Jan Garbarek
ABBA
Yes
Andrea Bocelli
Dalida
Antonio Vivaldi
Toto
Cutugno
Shirley Bassey
Supertramp
Ella Fitzgerald
Louis Armstrong
Sting
Carmen McRae
Nat King Cole
Dinah Washington
Marc Arian
Joe Dassin
Stevie Wonder
Cat Stevens
Wilson Pickett
The Beatles
Chuck Berry
Elvis Presley
Precious Wilson
Eruption
Bob Dylan
Omar and the Howlers
John Denver
Nat King Cole
Bing Crosby
Disney Orchestra
French Noël Choir
Tino Rossi
Paul McCartney
Albert Hammond
Ricky Nelson
Eagles
Beach Boys
José Feliciano
Billy Joel
Moody Blues
Local artists, poets and real world recordings
Turkish singers, groups, composers and narrators include:Turkish and foreign poets included in the programs are:
Also, real-world recordings of celebrities like:
Archive and cooperation
Holding digitally stored sixteen terabytes of extensive high-quality music and sound archive of around 250.000 pieces, historical speeches, sound effects and background music banks, Özge Ersu locates almost any piece of music written for many places and their people, as well as expanding his personal archive after each and every visit to different destinations by buying music or recording sounds in-situ.At times, various radio channels such as Radio Voyage, Virgin Radio, Radio Eksen, Kıbrıs Bayrak Radyo ve Televizyonu cooperate with him to compensate the missing songs and files. Furthermore, singers, composers, local people and libraries contribute to his content with copyrighted music or live recording sessions, whenever needed.