Gustav Thiel
PEOPLE of colour do not listen to classical music. Right? Wrong. The biggest achievement by a regional community radio station must be that of Fine Music Radio (FMR) in Cape Town. The radio station bucked traditional perceptions of classical music as an “elitist and inaccessible” genre of music by successfully enticing black and coloured listeners across the Western Cape.
Station manager Rashid Lombard says FMR has succeeded in luring those sections of the community which would otherwise ignore classical and jazz music. Says Lombard: “A lady who works at another regional station once came up to me and said how much she enjoyed listening to our music, but soon afterwards accused us of being elitist. I told her to get lost as we have clearly shown that through our efforts people in black and coloured areas are increasing their interest in classical music in particular.”
Studio manager Damon Durand enthuses that when opera tickets were offered in a station competition “the reactions from people in black townships were overwhelming”.
Programmes manager Leslie McKenzie agrees. He argues that since FMR’s inception, classical music shops in certain areas are inundated by requests from people “not normally thought to listen to that kind of music”.
With the restructuring of the airwaves after the 1994 elections, FMR was born a year later in July 1995 when it was initiated by the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra’s Jacques De Vos Malan and Six Street Studios.
One of 12 community radio stations operating in the greater Cape Town area, the mission statement of FMR is to entertain a wide community of discerning music lovers by providing a series of classic, jazz, blues and other forms of “fine music”. It also seeks to educate and inform through arts and news programmes.
Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, FMR is largely staffed by volunteers, with six full-time staffers.
Although the station believes it has a listenership in excess of 100 000, All Media Product Survey (Amps) research came up with 29 000. McKenzie and Lombard, however, believe that the Amps research is flawed as it was drawn from a sample of 200 people in areas where FMR cannot be heard.
Cape Newspapers did a survey of radio listenership in 1996 and stated that FMR probably has more than 100 000 listeners. Of the 1 660 000 people in Cape Town and fringe areas who listen to the radio at least once a month, 26 000 ranked FMR as one of their favourite stations.
Lombard says these figures can be improved if difficulties with transmitters are sorted out. The key areas which have bad reception include Sea Point and the Atlantic Seaboard at sea level as far as Hout Bay. The signal is also unavailable at Fish Hoek and in parts of Stellenbosch.
FMR fills a specialised niche market on the African continent, being one of only two radio stations to play classical music and jazz exclusively. The second station is the recent FM licence awarded to Classic FM in Gauteng.
Market research done by FMR shows that the continuing evolution of community and commercial radio in the country will have an impact on its market position. McKenzie envisages a time when FMR will franchise its idea to other stations. “We are not bound by the constraints of geography, but mostly by the music we play. We believe there is a definite market in the rest of the country.”
For the moment, FMR seems satisfied that the station is succeeding in expanding its niche market to areas where people in the past simply did not have access to classical music and certain forms of jazz.
“Now I wish the media buyers will wake up to this trend,” says Lombard.