Thebe Mabanga in your ear I recently had the opportunity to listen to scenario planner Wolfgang Grukel give a talk on his book, Ten lessons from the future.
Grukel paints an interesting picture of what life will be like in 2020. When one thinks of radio in its capacity as the country’s most accessible medium, it is interesting to speculate about what will happen, not in 2020, but in the next decade.
The advent of the Internet and the evolution of the new economy will continue to have a huge impact on broadcasting. Grukel paints an interesting picture in which a station like Radio 702 has more listeners in London than in Johannesburg, presumably homesick South Africans. The anticipated increase in bandwidth also provides exciting possibilities for what stations can do with the Net. For instance, you can now access an archive version of an interesting radio show you might have missed.
My latest item is called “John Robbie versus Manto”. The Internet will also have major implications on the skills required of broadcasters. No longer will it be good enough for Gerald de Kock (SAfm) and Thabiso Tema (Metro fm) to cross from the Olympics in Sydney and tell us what we can see on TV. They will now have to post on their station’s website an interview with a restaurant owner in Sydney, telling us how the Olympics have helped his business or one with an International Olympic Committee member in the face of another drug scandal. Indeed, free holidays for pathetic reporters – De Kock and Thema not included – are coming to an end. The sad truth about the new media though, and this is where the likes of Grukel miss the point, is that its impact will remain minimal as long as the issue of accessibility is not thoroughly addressed. For the majority of radio listeners, changes will be driven by factors such as changing listenership profile and ownership composition. It will be very interesting to note what happens when the next commercial licences are issued. This will be driven by two factors. The first is the SABC’s pending restructuring.
The public broadcaster will have to operate a commercial arm abiding by the existing licence guidelines. This, I think, will consist of entities like Metro and 5fm. The commercial arm will partly subsidise the public broadcasting arm, which will consist of the custodians of our heritage: indigenous language stations.
According to the old Independent Broadcasting Authority schedule, next April was pencilled in as the time for undertaking a viability study for commercial licences. The schedule might have to be revised following the formation of the Independent Communications Authority (Icasa).
When Icasa finally undertakes its study, I hope they confirm the suspicions of Yfm’s Dirk Hartford that there is room for a youth talk station in Gauteng. I also hope they find that there is room for another national commercial station. The regulatory body has hinted reluctance at issuing a national commercial licence. So at best, stations like Kaya FM and Y would have to apply for a separate licence and operate as separate stations, like P4 (Durban and Cape Town) and Primedia’s 702 and Cape Talk. This is a pity really. First, because in Y’s case, it will be difficult to run a youth station away from the heartbeat of popular culture and, more importantly, there is only one Khabzela.