Local music is the way forward
Radio industry gives thumbs up to 90% SA content move
LOCAL music is the way forward for radio in South Africa. This seems to be the feeling among commercial radio stations and DJs in the wake of the SABC’s decision to play 90percent local content across its 18 stations for a three-month trial period.
It’s a dramatic step, which will have commercial stations carefully eyeing the audience statistics through the trial period, but is this what South African listeners want?
Smile 90.4 FM programme director Clive Ridgway seems to think it is.
“We believe it’s good for business to be local and have a flavour of the community and the people that you are talking to,” he said. “We really want to be a relevant local community radio station.”
His radio station plays 50 percent local music, which is already beyond the 40 percent minimum stipulated by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa).
With local musicians offering top quality tunes, Ridgway felt the time was ripe to give local music plenty of airtime and also take into account global trends of sourcing music.
“We feel that SA music quality is improving, and being locally relevant is the way of the future for radio,” he said. “People who want international music can get that from the internet.”
Now, all eyes will be on the audience numbers as the three-month trial reveals what South African listeners want.
It will have a massive knock-on effect for radio stations, which rely on the money generated from advertising.
Ad-spend is determined by the number of listeners the station has, but also the demographics and income levels of those listeners.
Ridgway said the SABC wouldn’t have made the drastic shift without some kind of indication it would be good for listeners.
“They must feel comfortable that the shift that they’re making won’t affect the audience figures (negatively),” he said. “Time will tell what happens.”
While Smile 90.4 FM is comfortable with its 50/50 split between local and foreign content, the SABC’s experiment may just prompt other commercial stations to reconsider their mix.
“The commercial stations will watch it with interest and a certain amount of scepticism,” Ridgway said. “The feeling among commercial stations is that listeners prefer international music.”
Heart 104.9 FM programme manager Denver Apollus said he preferred not to comment, but the station’s star DJ Diggy Bongz tweeted his support for the move.
“Big up SABC, leading by example,” he wrote.
“This #SABC 90% SA music story is going to be interesting to watch, especially for their commercial entities. I support the move nonetheless.”
Bongz said local music would definitely
quality tunes for most of the day.
Former 5FM show host and DJ Gareth Cliff said it would probably impact the audience numbers. “In the short term, it probably will impact the listenership on a station like 5FM because radio is habit and people largely choose music stations based on their music selection,” Cliff told mybroadband.com.
No longer working for the SABC, Cliff now runs independent online radio station Cliff Central.
“We’re not in competition with the SABC. Cliff Central is about producing local content and already provides a platform for local musicians to tell their stories,” he said. “Now they will have more chance of their music actually being played on SABC and reaching a mass audience.”
KFM is also looking to increase its local music content. Station manager Colleen Louw said: “We play 30percent local content on KFM in line with our licence conditions. We are getting ready to increase this to 35 percent in line with the new local content regulations.
“We have 18 months in terms of the law to meet these new regulations.”