AND BLACK LITERATURE
Bafana Khumalo
IF you thought the deregulated broadcasting dial was going to be inundated with mindless pop and inane talk stations, despair not — help is at hand. Hidden among hopeful commercial broadcasters are prospective radio stations aimed at niche markets.
Black-owned Skotaville Publishers is applying to establish a national community radio station. “We are not jumping on to the bandwagon,” says Skotaville managing director Mothobi Mutloatse. “We applied for the first time in 1984, two years after we set up the publishing house.” The application was rejected by the postmaster general. However now, with the changing conditions on the ground, “we decided to revisit it”.
The tentatively-named Radio Buwa is intended to have a local music component and a literary one, where African literature “especially by writers in African languages will be given exposure”.
For Skotaville, the radio station is part of the emancipation process. “Everybody is crazy about political power and to some extent the economic aspect of it,” Mutloatse explains, “but the cultural aspect is relegated to the backyard. We hope that by this, we will be contributing to the development of black journalism, which is in the doldrums.”
The project, ready to go as soon as the Independent Broadcasting Authority grants licences, doesn’t yet have a source of funds but Mutloatse feels the government should contribute toward funding stations which are community based “to level the playing fields”.
From Afrocentric to Eurocentric — and Michael Letellier’s Classic FM, another niche broadcasting venture. “Ours is a commercial private station,” says Letellier, a former SABC broadcaster — he once headed Radio Today.
When he spent time with a record company marketing classical music Letellier decided there are enough people who would want to tune into Bach and Beethoven — he was “selling music to people who might not know much about it”. Add to that the success of classical musicians who visit South Africa, and Letellier decided this kind of station could be popular enough to be viable.
“The station is going to fulfil a very real need,” he says, noting that “you don’t have to have a degree to listen to classical music.” He says he is encouraged by the success of Classic FM in the United Kingdom which has over four million listeners.
The idea of a classical music station might smack of Eurocentrism but Letellier scoffs at the notion. “Classical music is the basis of all music — and besides, jazz owes more to classical music than to the rhythms of Africa.”
Classic FM is not going to target only the white community. “There is so much choral music in the township which is rooted in classical music.”
He is aware the station might not garner as much support as the pop music counterparts but he is confident that the calibre of listener who is going to tune in will be “attractive to the advertiser, the people you really need to survive in the business”.