Thebe Mabanga
in your ear
The basic challenge of a radio station is to get a listener to tune in for as long as possible. But the process begins with a concerted effort to get the listener to tune in in the first place.
A popular, but expensive, way is to mount billboards, use the print and electronic media and make a colourful noise about why listeners should set their dial to a specific frequency.
Recently Johannesburg’s Highveld Stereo ran a competition called “Show us your 94.7” to celebrate the station’s newly unveiled logo. Listeners were asked to depict “94.7” in wild and wacky ways and the results were quite amusing.
There was a listener who mowed his lawn in the shape of 94.7 and then set it alight. There was also the one in which a high school staff member called out the whole student body and got them to stand in the shape of 94.7 fairly predictable.
I can seriously not claim to be excited about the new logo and that is not because I am bitter at the judges. I liked the old police badge insignia much better. What’s more there was this butt-kicking billboard of “Fine Young Cannibals” with two spanking new, shimmering red pick-up trucks. That is what I miss most. But Highveld is not the only station whose changes I disagree with.
Talk station Radio 702 has, for a long time, boasted the most intelligent billboard advertising. The simple yet effective white on black billboards with phrases like “If you missed our news today, don’t worry. The press will repeat it tomorrow”, “Get the news before it’s history” or “Prevent truth decay”, used to make traffic jams more bearable. But to see how effective these were, ask yourself now how many can you recall? Not as many as you actually saw, right?
That is, perhaps, why 702 has changed to the aesthetically disagreeable boards with faces of the various personalities. The best of these is one where former breakfast jock John Berks says to Noleen Maholwana Sangqu: “Of course I understand blacks.” Sangqu’s retort, “That is because you have had maids all your life,” is a kicker. But like an off-form football player, the idea is brilliant but the execution below par.
Another outstanding effort is that of Metro FM’s “What makes you black”, which features a popular house tune, beautiful people in a glossy world and the station’s Manhattan skyline logo coming alive as a graphic equaliser.
The trouble with this campaign is that it is a prime example of how good advertising can be used to create hype about nothing. Metro’s changes were image driven and did not really involve a radical change in programming.
One of the most interesting mass campaigns was undertaken by the SABC to revamp its African language stations. In 1996 Tracy Going and Tim Modise stood at the Johannesburg stadium to introduce us to new station names like Ukhozi, Umhlobo Wenene, Motsweding and Thobela. But to this day I still have to point out that the stations are actually radio Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana and sePedi.