With seven new commercial radio stations, advertisers and listeners are flirting with the dial. Brett Davidson and Ferial Haffajee report
Seven new commercial radio stations have jumped on the bandwagon – both FM and Medium Wave – this year, sparking a listening revolution.
Station managers say many listeners are flirting with the dial, dipping into two or three stations and they’re bringing advertisers with them – vital if commercial radio is to flourish.
Although it may sound as if radio’s come into its own, D-day is still a way off. In February, the most authoritative audience measurement research, the All Media Product Survey (Amps) diaries will be released. Only then will nationally recognised figures be available and the market be able to gauge the success of the new stations.
However, from an advertiser’s perspective, the new stations have already upped the choice available, and have begun to fragment the radio market into niche audiences.
Industry pundits believe that Gauteng’s two stations, YFM and Kaya FM are doing best. Their targeted black youth and adult audiences are biting the bait, though advertisers are slower off the mark.
Classic FM’s aggressive arrow aimed at an upmarket Gauteng listenership has to all indications also found its mark.
It’s early days yet for the Afrikaans- medium Punt Geselsradio’s two stations in Gauteng and the Western Cape, but Cape Talk in Cape Town claims advertising support worth millions.
Jazz lovers are tuning into P4 in Cape Town, securing advertising for the station from banks and financial services groups.
John Barham of The Media Shop says advertisers can now pinpoint markets more easily. Black adults, news junkies, the youth, the black middle class and rebellious Afrikaners all have radio stations vying for their attention, with programming schedules designed to draw them in and sales managers focused closely on defining an audience.
Such careful marketing has also seen a shake-up at other stations. The SABC’s Metro FM and 5FM have both changed their line-ups, opting for younger audiences.
Josh Dovey, managing director of Eurospace Media Direction, says that, in addition to competing for existing audiences, the new stations are helping to increase radio’s slice of the advertising cake from the 13% it now accounts for.
But Coen Gouws, managing director of Radmark advertising sales, disagrees: “International experience in many countries shows that radio does not necessarily increase its market share in a deregulated environment.” He adds that radio loyalties are not switched easily.
Instead, the flirtatiousness that many new frequencies generates among listeners could be the very thing that makes advertisers jittery.
The new station managers are jumping like swamis on hot coals to find alternative means of measuring audience as they strive to meet what some regard as “overly optimistic” advertising targets.
Although Amps is authoritative and the only meter trusted by advertisers, many in the radio industry feel the survey is too slow and cumbersome to deal effectively with the rapidly changing radio sector.
Classic FM, for one, has commissioned its own study, conducted by international company Broadcast Programming and Research.
Says Classic’s MD Eon de Vos, “Amps takes too long. We can’t make a decision in March next year based on research done in October. The environment is changing too quickly.”
From a sample of 800, the survey indicates that in their second month of broadcast, Classic FM had a daily cumulative listenership of 329 000 listeners per week.
More than one in two listeners tunes in for longer than four hours a day, says de Vos. In the evening a black listenership of about 83 000 tunes in for jazz and choral music.
The jazz station P4 has also recently completed its own audience research which will be released next week, but marketing manager Andre van Huyssteen believes it has about 150 000 listeners on average per week.
Broadcast Programming and Research’s study also showed that YFM has captured a weekly listenership of 260 000. Gouws, MD of Radmark, which has YFM on its books, says advertising revenue for the station is “into six figures”.
The station is so carefully niched that when a college recently bought a radio spot to advertise its courses, “the phone didn’t stop ringing for three hours”, says Gouws. The same ad on Metro FM did not yield a single call.
YFM’s executive director Dirk Hartford says advertisers are a bit wary, preferring to wait for the Amps figures.
As a result, rates on the youth station are up to a third less than some of the other new stations. The station has, however, attracted 15 national advertisers, including Clover, Coke, Beechies, Edgars, Jet Stores, Simba, Unisa and Chicken Licken, as well as regional advertisers.
“Our view is that there is huge potential [in the local advertising market],” Hartford says, adding “People don’t know they can advertise very cheaply on radio.”
Hartford’s happy with progress so far. He says advertising sales are looking so good that he could almost halve his projections of how long it will take to start covering the station’s costs.
Van Huyssteen’s not putting a figure on his sales, though he says that P4 is “bang on target”, adding that while advertising agencies have not supported the station, brand managers have recognised its audience appeal. Its advertisers include South African Breweries (SAB), Allied Bank, Edgars and Syfrets.
Elna Latchman, sales manager of Kaya FM, says the station worked on a zero budget for its first five months. However, advertising support has been much stronger than expected. “We are now past the R1,5- million mark and we have top advertisers such as Schweppes, SAB and Jet Stores,” she says.
Cape Talk is taking advantage of its sister relationship with Gauteng’s Radio 702 to offer package deals across the two stations, besides station-specific incentives.
Mike Wills says Cape Talk had managed to attract more than R2-million in bookings even before the switch-on. He’s satisfied with current advertising booking levels, and feels the talk format offers advertisers opportunities not available in a music format.
In contrast to these stations, Classic FM says its rate card is not flexible. The station cannot offer discounts on advertising as it provides limited advertising time – a maximum of six minutes per hour.
De Vos says this gives the listeners almost uninterrupted music, while saving advertisers from the worry that their their message will get lost in the clutter. “Believe me, we won’t go hungry,” says De Vos, whose rates are slightly more expensive than YFM or Kaya, but around a third of the morning rates of an established operator like Highveld Stereo.
The first advertisers to sign up prior to the station’s launch were financial institutions, followed by car manufacturers. Classic FM is slowly making inroads into the retail industry and other products aimed at an audience with a high level of disposable income.
Although the newcomers are generally upbeat about their finances, Barham warns that things may become a lot tougher in the post-Christmas period, when demand for ad- space drops significantly.