A week after announcing the split with Danker, Ong’s longtime on-air partner Mark van Cuylenburg, better known as The Flying Dutchman (FD), left The Big Show to join sister station One FM 91.3’s The Morning Drive. Before, The Big Show had Ong, FD, and Angelique Teo as its hosts starting in 2021.
Ong felt sad over separating from FD. Back when they were both at Class 95, they actually hosted a show together for a good ten years, from 2003 to 2013. In 2015, FD and Ong partnered again after Ong joined SPH Radio. The morning show on One FM 91.3 was hosted by the two before they moved over to Kiss92 in 2023. According to Ong, their professional split is purely business – there’s nothing personal behind it.
Ong feels comfortable working alongside FD, who’s 68 now. Together with Angel, the trio worked very well. However, Ong thinks they need someone like FD to strengthen One FM 91.3 a bit more. Since Ong and Angel have been working together for a while now, they’re focusing on building a strong new partnership. Ong figures it probably wasn’t a simple call for the bosses at SPH, but he sees it as part of refreshing things for both radio stations.
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This radio DJ is happy that he and Teo, who’s 50, have started heading in a fresh direction with The Big Show. Now, they’re talking about all sorts of interesting stuff on air weekdays from 6 to 10 in the morning – things like being eco-friendly, travel adventures, the latest tech, and entertainment. Plus, they even have The Big Show TV, where viewers can actually chat with the guests on the show.
Presenter of the year
On April 4, Ong hit a cool milestone in his career – he won the very first Presenter of the Year award at this big annual awards thing that SPH Media has for their English, Malay, and Tamil media groups. He also mentioned that winning the Presenter of the Year award was a real boost of encouragement for him.
Better person on and off the air
A lot has changed since he was at Mediacorp. He is thankful that he has not received any warning letters from the Infocomm Media Development Authority. He has become a better person on and off air due to his bosses at SPH Radio. He also mentioned that winning the Presenter of the Year award was a real boost of encouragement for him.
What Ong hopes for is to bring the radio folks in Singapore closer together, because he feels like there’s this unnecessary divide between them. He’s not the ‘fierce attack dog’ he used to be back in the day, always trying to one-up the other DJs on different stations. Those competitive days are over for him.
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Now, Ong’s focus is on bringing people together, and he knows he’s got to be flexible. To hold the team together, Ong had to try out new ideas to fill the gap after FD moved to 91.3. Even though they’re not co-hosting anymore, Ong and FD still hang out after work sometimes. Apparently, Ong used to always try to get FD to go out for drinks, and then One FM would give FD a hard time the next day, saying he’d come in a bit unsteady! Despite all that, Ong’s totally open to working with FD again in the future.
He said that the duo would go with whatever the bosses wanted. If they get a call to reunite, Ong said, “Sure”.
