Ferial Haffajee In your ear
It’s good to hear South Africans holding their own among the products of one of the world’s best broadcasters. Safm’s daily joint programme with the BBC is an easy synergy providing a boost to drive-time radio around the country. It is on Safm every day from 5 to 7pm.
The new-sound PM Live builds on the strengths of the old programme of the same name. It is run by a young team comprising South Africans, Britons and a Frenchman. PM Live is more polished now – it’s fast and pacy and doesn’t miss a story.
The programme is a mix of news bulletins, live interviews and real radio treats in the form of news packages, where the clever use of sound, scripting and interviews can take you to right to the protesters on Jakarta’s streets or to Soweto’s very first gymkhana.
The producers also cut liberally from the BBC’s current affairs shows; sometimes too liberally.
This can get confusing when you think that your dial may have chanced upon BBC World Service by mistake. It also means that listeners get fewer local news items and that can mean missing out on SABC radio reporters like Antjie Samuel and her team, award-winning Angie Kapelianis and budding young talents who report from corners of the country that many news bureaux do not touch.
Luckily there are excellent slots that make the programme truly South African. Commentators like Sandile Dikeni, Christine Qunta and Ken Owen provide a diet of political opinion that shows just how far the SABC has come in freeing the airwaves.
There is a new emphasis on business news which has been contracted out. It’s run by the Financial Mail’s Michael Coulson who concentrates on the financial markets and company news. This section of the programme is a little out of kilter with the slightly off-beat tone of the rest of the programme.
That tone comes from the likes of Brett Davidson, whose daily entertainment news is a welcome break from the politicking of the day and from Tuesday’s global hit where music that is making it big from Motown to Turkey is played. One of the slots that survived from the old programme is the comment slot where listeners views are recorded, edited and played back for a frank temperature check of the nation.
Presenters make or break a current affairs programme. Tim Modise and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, who present PM Live, are no exception. Modise, who started at Radio Bop as a DJ, has made a fine impression as a political commentator and interviewer, who never lets a politician slip from his grasp. He is laid back and quite a contrast to the clipped accomplishment of Quist-Arcton, who has worked at the BBC since 1985.
Dual presenting is never easy – it works when an easy rapport or healthy difference of opinion is relayed to the listener.
PM Live is on Safm 104-107 FM every day between 5 and 7pm