If 1997 will be remembered as the year in which broadcasting ruled media’s roost, then radio can crow loudest.
Its revolution came in March when the Independent Broadcasting Authority dished out seven licences to the operators of new commercial radio stations: four in Gauteng, three in the Cape and a more recent licence in Durban.
For too long wrapped in the monopoly of the SABC, radio had become moribund with talent constrained by the lack of airspace.
But suddenly the wireless is no longer guileless! The dial clicks into a range of new voices and sounds, from programming targeting only the youth to classics, talk and smooth jazz.
Taxis are emblazoned with YFM’s (youth radio station) funky logo and on the Cape Flats, jazz lovers are talking P4. Dinner tables near Table Mountain resonate with “Did you hear what John Maytham said on Cape Talk?” while in Johannesburg, Kaya FM is tapping into the aspirations of the burgeoning black middle class.
Guesses on listenership figures from the new czars of the microphones and their managers are wild: Classic FM, for example, surveyed 800 listeners and tallied — an informal and unaudited — 329 000 listeners a week.
The honest answer is there’s no knowing until February when Amps (the All Media Products Survey) , the official survey of media patterns, is released.
That bible of the advertising industry will spell survival or decay for new stations and some are likely to lose in the race for listeners and markets as advertising shrinks and start-up budgets run low. Coen Gouws of Radmark advertising sales observes: “International experience in many countries shows that radio does not necessarily increase its market share in a deregulated environment.”
Currently, radio accounts for only 13% of the total advertising pie, a slice now shared among the SABC’s stations, the stations the SABC sold off and the eight new entrants.