Marion Edmunds
SOUTH AFRICAN Broadcasting Corporation decision-makers are considering changing the course of SAfm and going for a niche market by targeting the new South African elite.
The station has lost 25 percent of its advertising this year and, as reported last week, its audience is a paltry 250 000.
A small team — headed by newly appointed Radio Programme head Hawu Mbatha — is to review the station over the next two weeks, to come up with ways to improve it.
Many admit the station is in trouble, but radio chief Govin Reddy is still defending SAfm’s performance.
Reddy said the SABC would consider targeting a clearly “identifiable audience”. This could be the new South Africa’s intelligentsia and
In the same breath, Reddy said there was nothing wrong with SAfm, and lashed out at the Mail & Guardian for what he says has been a campaign to discredit and vilify the station. He asked for more balanced reporting. Last week the M&G ran an article describing internal anxiety about the station’s drop in listenership, but praising its current affairs
Key strategic thinkers in the SABC met last week for discussions on SAfm, among other things, where a number of proposals were put forward, including shutting down the station altogether or firing a number of managers. Reddy said that he could not comment on the meeting, but said that he would not shut down SAfm.
“I can’t imagine running the radio portfolio without an English-language radio station,”he said this week.
Reddy would not reveal what recommendations would be implemented from a critical report drafted by Australian radio consultant Anne Tonks after a review of the station about six months ago.
He said that the report had been circulated to the relevant people but that it was confidential and its contents could not be revealed. Reddy now denies he ever said SAfm would be SABC Radio’s flagship station.
Reddy also said he had never wanted people to stop listening to the station, but that it was a pioneering station and he had expected a drop in listenership when the changes were
“I am not worried about the station,”he said. “Nobody is at fault.”