African radio is switching from being a vehicle of the state to one of commercial enterprise. Peter van den Akker reports
A TAXI driver called Antwi, in Ghana’s capital Accra, roars with laughter. “She is a sugar mammy herself!” he exclaims, and to get his message across to his passengers, he points repeatedly to the radio set dangling underneath his dashboard.
Antwi hardly plays music anymore on the cassette machine in his battered taxi cab. He tunes in to Joy Radio instead: Accra’s newly established commercial radio station.
On this trip, Joy Radio presented a talk-in programme where the listeners could participate in a debate on the moral implications of the sugar daddy and sugar mammy phenomenon in Ghana. And the phone-in woman who so dearly wanted to make a more subtle contribution amid those dripping of Victorian indignation was immediately exposed by Antwi as a sugar mammy herself. Antwi still chuckled when he raised the volume of his car radio for Michael Jackson’s Black and White.
Since the early Nineties when the Ghanaian government decided to open up the airwaves for private initiatives in broadcasting, the commercial Joy Radio has been one of the first to jump into this new market.
With an estimated audience of three million people, Joy Radio’s programming is as simple as it is effective. Take a huge dose of Western pop music, lard it with talk radio and commercials and your popularity is guaranteed.
Many more licence applicants in Ghana are still waiting in the wings – Joy radio has been one of the few successful applicants. The transformation of the media industry in Ghana makes it abundantly clear that the days of state-owned radio and television stations are over.
More African governments are giving in to privatisation of the airwaves, albeit reluctantly.
After all, it does not make too much sense for African governments, whether in a dictatorship or democracy, to have a stranglehold on the country’s electronic media; especially when the advent of satellite has given anyone who can afford a “saucer”, access to all the information of the world.
Politically, African rulers with an impressive record of coup d’tats, have also come to realise that controlling a national radio station no longer guarantees control of a country.
Also, the days of “Please stay by your radios for further announcements”, followed by the national anthem and martial music, are over.
Uganda is another example of a country which shed its fear of private initiatives in the domain of radio and television.
Nowadays, Uganda’s capital, Kampala, has no less than three commercial radio stations, fiercely involved in competition as all three cover the same urban area with an estimated audience of 1,5-million people.
The fragmentation of Africa’s airwaves is in full swing and nothing stands in its way. Listening to Capital Radio in Kampala is remarkably similar to picking up Joy Radio in Accra.
Capital’s ingredients are exactly the same – Western pop music, a talk show and commercials. Programme director Hubb Gales explains: “A commercial approach leaves little or no room for the elements of a public radio station. Advertisements on a successful commercial radio station eat considerably into the available airtime and the radio station owners, although they want to see profits, do not want to immediately invest the profits in expensive programme production.”
Hence the “flat” output of the fledgling commercial radio stations in Ghana and Uganda. And yet, listening to these programmes does ring a bell: South African community radio stations are also involved in establishing their own style and sound.
Unlike Ghana and Uganda where commercial viability is the guiding factor, community radio stations in South Africa have to manoeuvre between the Scylla and Charibdis of lofty Independent Broadcasting Authority rules and regulations.
The mushrooming of new radio stations freed from former state control will, in some way, contribute to new opportunities in mass communication.
“That’s what I expect will happen,” says Gales, who got involved with Capital Radio in Kampala when he toured Africa as music producer for the Dutch radio station VPRO. “I am very interested in African music, the real authentic stuff, you know! But the people here are not really interested in their own music. What they do want to hear are Michael Jackson, Silk, Fugees and Boyz II Men – exclusively Western pop music.
`There is, however, still some room for popular music from Zaire, Kenya and South Africa. Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Brenda Fassie are very popular with our listeners here.”
Have the doors swung open for a new brand of radio journalism on Joy Radio in Ghana, Capital FM, Sanyu and Buganda Radio in Uganda? In a way yes.
Young and ambitious broadcasters, who only two years ago had no other option than joining the state-owned broadcasting houses (like the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation and Radio Uganda), are now flocking to the new commercial stations where they often find better salaries and more breathing space, which translates into spicy presentations and sometimes highly entertaining radio debates.
But a firmly founded tradition of self- censorship has young broadcasters in Ghana and Uganda imbued with a great alacrity in dodging any issue which smells “political”.
There is another factor which dampens the emergence of a new African journalism.
World Services like the BBC and Radio France International are in dire need of new “channels” for their international broadcasts. Their short-wave technology is a dying horse. So what is easier than selling your programme to local FM-stations on African soil. The BBC does so. Its Focus on Africa radio magazine can be heard on Joy Radio and on Capital FM.
The new wave in African radio is a steeple- chase. And countries like Ghana and Uganda seem to take the commercial hurdle without any problem. South African community radio stations, however, run a course with much more obstacles. It remains to be seen who will come out as the winner.
Peter van den Akker is a trainer of radio journalists, who has worked for a number of pivotal radio stations since 1969