Neil Johnson is concerned happy, but concerned.
He’s happy because he’s the station manager of P4 Cape Town, a newcomer to the commercial radio scene that’s gaining a formidable foothold in the lucrative Western Cape market.
According to the latest RAMS report (2002A), P4 Cape Town now accounts for 5.4 percent of time spent listening in the region, up from 4.6 percent in the previous six months, making it the Western Cape’s sixth most listened-to radio station.
One of eight ‘greenfield’ stations licensed in 1997, P4 Cape Town has certainly had its work cut out. Johnson admits that the going hasn’t been easy or cheap.
“As the new kid in the hood we understood that competing for available audience with stations like Good Hope FM and KFM would be a costly exercise. Starting and running any new business from the ground up is challenging, especially when your competitors have a decade head start and dominate the market with well known and entrenched brands. But P4 has gone from having a foot in the door to being acknowledged by our competitors as a primary threat.”
So why the concern?
It has nothing to do with the fact that P4 Cape Town is not yet profitable.
“There are some old debt issues that need sorting out,” Johnson says, “but operationally we’re three quarters away from break-even.”
It has rather to do with one of the aforementioned competitors, Good Hope FM, an SABC station that, according to the numbers, has every reason to feel threatened not just by P4, but also by KFM, the Western Cape’s reigning alpha male.
Good Hope’s listenership the same 16-34 year old, predominantly coloured audience that P4 targets has taken a pounding of late. Time spent listening is down in the past six months by 2.2 percent to 14 percent, placing the once-dominant regional station in third place behind Radio Sonder Grense.
What concerns P4’s boss, however, is that the SABC has brought in a heavyweight to reverse Good Hope’s fortunes. His name is Anthony Duke, station manager of 5FM. According to Johnson, “Anthony hasn’t just been around the block he owns the block.”
What concerns P4’s boss, however, is that the SABC has brought in a heavyweight to reverse Good Hope’s fortunes. His name is Anthony Duke, station manager of 5FM. According to Johnson, “Anthony hasn’t just been around the block he owns the block.”
High praise from a competitor who’s no slouch himself in terms of radio experience. It’s also the last thing you’d suspect upon meeting Duke, who must be one of the most down-to-earth and unassuming people on the SA radio scene.
Duke has been seconded to Good Hope by the new boss of SABC’s commercial radio portfolio, Randall Abrahams. For the remainder of the year, he will act as the station’s programme specialist, overseeing the implementation of a new programming strategy. I met him for a cup of coffee on the eve of his departure from Jo’burg.
“Since Peter Matlare came in as SABC chief last year, we’ve been looking at the positioning, the communication and the listeners across all SABC stations,” he explains.
“It was an extensive process with Yellowwood Brand Architects advising on marketing. The new strategies are now formulated. So, having been in programming for 25 odd years, it’s natural that I help implement things on the on-air side.”
With 5FM and Metro performing well, Good Hope is the obvious place for Duke to start. He’s the first to acknowledge that the station has been understaffed a problem exacerbated by the recent suspension of station manager Paul Kaye.
Duke wrote much of the new Good Hope strategy, and despite the recent blip in listenership, he’s upbeat about the station’s prospects.
“Randall and I were down in Cape Town last Thursday and Friday, and we went out to a club in Rylands to get a feel of who the market is and what music’s going down. There’s a surprising mix, with some great eclectic taste. You know, it’s hip-hop and some jazz and then suddenly an oldie by the Bee-Gees and you think, wow,” he smiles, his eyes lighting up as if the beat’s still pulsing.
“So the point is, Good Hope’s listeners are the ones who would identify with that vibe. They’re there, no two ways about it, and there’s a lot of them. It’s really just a question of whether, with all the problems, we’ve been offering them a good enough product.”
Duke is quick to point out that, technically, Good Hope is still the biggest station in Cape Town itself, because its footprint is limited to the city, while KFM’s covers a big chunk of the outlying area as well.
“So all of our marketing will revolve around the fact that we’re a Cape Town station that we are Cape Town. But you’ve got to deliver on that promise. It has to be backed up by the programming.”
To this end, Duke is joined by fellow Jozi boy, Metro FM’s programming manager Leo Manne, who will spend four months at Good Hope as programme advisor.
Among his other duties, Manne will be sniffing out Western Cape marketing opportunities for Metro.
Manne’s assignment is part of a broader strategy for SABC’s commercial radio portfolio. The plan is for national stations like Metro and 5FM to “attack the regions” by developing greater visibility in markets such as the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
In short, the SABC is plotting a large-scale coastal invasion.
Duke is keenly aware that’s it’s an ambitious approach. Once his secondment to Good Hope is over, he’ll be taking over programming training for the group, helping to implement the strategy from an on-air perspective.
“Being national,” he says, “you sit up here and don’t know what the surf’s like in Durban and Cape Town. It’s not that easy when you’re up against regional stations that are right there and have their fingers on the pulse. A regional station knows exactly what its competitors are doing on any given day; what their promotional activity is and stuff like that. As a national station you need someone on the ground. Equally,” he adds, “we need to get across the message that nationals offer something regionals don’t.”
But the regional stations are hardly quaking in their boots.
“For their potential reach, 5FM and Metro have never had much market share in Cape Town,” points out Neil Johnson.
“It’s going to take pots of marketing money, actual body contact with the audience as well as gripping programming to take the nationals regional. Our regional stations are no longer the ma & pa outfits they once were. And the question remains: if national stations manage to grow their non-Gauteng base, will they be able to translate this success into turnover?”
It’s a fair point. As Johnson notes, “looking at the antipodes, North America and Europe, local stations are far more successful in attracting both audiences and revenue, and are cheaper to operate.”
Another regional station that’s been gaining audience lately is Radio Algoa, the dominant force in the Eastern Cape. The station’s listenership has grown by over 35 percent in the past two years, and now boasts around 400 000 listeners in an area stretching along the coast from East London to Plettenberg Bay, and inland from Aliwal North to Colesberg.
Algoa has so far been spared any serious competition from other privatised SABC stations or greenfield outfits like P4, and managing director Dave Tiltmann plays down the threat posed by the nationals.
“5FM’s regional marketing drives don’t scare us,” he says, “All our listeners have a sense of belonging to our community. There is a sense of pride and regional patriotism towards the Eastern Cape. We own the region, both in terms of our market penetration in our target market and our regional marketing events that dominate the Eastern Cape calendar.”
For all the posturing, it will be interesting to see how Algoa fares against stiffer competition, not just from the SABC’s regional drives, but also from new licences in the Eastern Cape if and when ICASA ever gets around to issuing them.
For all the posturing, it will be interesting to see how Algoa fares against stiffer competition, not just from the SABC’s regional drives, but also from new licences in the Eastern Cape if and when ICASA ever gets around to issuing them.
The most daunting theatre in SABC’s battle for the regions will more likely be KwaZulu-Natal. Having spent fourteen years there with Capital, Anthony Duke is well aware that breaking into South Africa’s most populous province will require some serious giant slaying.
“East Coast Radio’s success is phenomenal,” he says. “They’ve certainly filled the gap left by Capital Radio, but more than that, they’ve probably been the most successful station in really owning their region. KFM has its regional base and Good Hope’s also got its huge regional base. There are other bigger ones like Umhlobo Wenene, and up here in Gauteng you have Highveld and Jacaranda who together, while they don’t own the region, are big. But East Coast it’s the kingdom of the Zulu, and they’ve really got that right.”
So how does one compete against marauding Impi?
“Once again,” says Duke, “in terms of the strategy for the national stations, we have to find the gap that’s not being served, and serve that gap on a regional basis.”
Duke is far more complimentary about East Coast Radio than is his new boss. In last month’s issue, Randall Abrahams said of both East Coast and KFM that they own their regions “by default,” not because they’re great stations.
Perhaps it’s just Randall’s bad-boy-Idols-judge persona coming to the fore, but the statement provoked the ire of East Coast general manager, Omar Essack.
“Randall isn’t going to get into the hearts of the KZN audience by insulting their intelligence implying that they come to East Coast despite the quality of programming. A 142 percent rise in audience doesn’t come by default,” says Essack.
“I’m glad he understands that marketing is the only way he can try to compete. It’s bizarre that with all the help of television exposure, neither of his two drive show hosts has made any impact in KZN.”
Them’s fightin’ words, and Essak is confident it’s a fight he’s poised to win. After all, he has only one territory to protect, while national stations like 5FM and Metro need to spread their forces far thinner.
According to Essack, “the moment Randall starts trying to focus too hard on any one region, he’s going to get eaten in another. Trying to build audiences in KZN will take the eye off Gauteng, allowing 94.7, Jacaranda, Kaya and YFM to fry him in that region. Randall is a superb programmer, but he can’t niche with a national station. Regions have significantly different people and psychologies. Trying to make Durbanites happy is just going to irritate Gautengers.”
So, in attacking the regions, the SABC faces the seemingly paradoxical task of broadening the appeal of national stations, while at the same time catering to narrow, often parochial, regional sensibilities.
So, in attacking the regions, the SABC faces the seemingly paradoxical task of broadening the appeal of national stations, while at the same time catering to narrow, often parochial, regional sensibilities.
One of the most palpable aspects of this challenge is the question of “crossing the colour line,” as Abrahams has said he’s keen to do. Is it conceivable, for example, that a station like 5FM could retain its predominantly white listenership in Gauteng while appealing to a coloured audience in the Cape and a black audience in KwaZulu-Natal? Duke thinks it is.”What’s important,” he says, “is that the station strategies are focused on 0-3 year plans and 0-5 year plans. So if you take into account what the demographic is doing as you go along, you can start changing your programming accordingly. In the case of 5FM, you need to scrap outdated content that belongs in an absolutely white station, because you’ve got 20 percent black listeners. And that 20 percent is something you can build on. I’m confident that 5FM, one day whether it’s three, five or ten years from today will become the premier station that encompasses its target market with a much broader mix of people.”
5FM’s decision to bring Jamiroquai to South Africa is illustrative of this vision. Rather than a rock act that would have reeled in 5FM’s traditional white target market, the station opted for a ‘crossover’ artist with appeal across the colour spectrum.
Of course, there’s always the danger of trying to be all things to all people and ending up alienating everyone. That’s something Neil Johnson thinks both 5FM and Metro are already in danger of doing. He has some blunt advice for Randall Abrahams:
“He shouldn’t worry about the colour line as much as culling the ego line. Both 5FM and Metro formats are held hostage by their cult-of-personality DJ’s, with little formatic or programming consistency to speak of. My take on this is that if a black oke likes the Beatles he has to listen to a so-called ‘white’ station, and if a white oke wants to listen to Public Enemy or Luther Vandross he’ll tune into a ‘black’ station.
“Having said this, take a look at the growth of black audiences of East Coast, Highveld and even Jacaranda. It speaks for itself. This issue is not about colour, but rather about lifestyle and formats.”
On this last point, Johnson and Duke actually concur.
“It’s not as if either 5FM or Metro are saying, ‘this year I’m going to get more black listeners and you’re going to get more coloured listeners,'” Duke insists. “The whole environment here is changing even LSMs are going to change. They’ve done a survey now called FutureFacts, which places people in a more up-to-date way in terms of where they’re at, what they have and what their wants and needs are. So the Landscape itself is changing. The aim of a station like 5FM is not to be defined by colour. It should be colourless.”
The landscape is indeed changing. It’s a time of flux for South African coastal radio, with boundaries shifting between black and white, national and regional, old guard and young blood. There’s no telling what the new tide will bring, but one thing’s for sure: the surf’s up and we’re in for a wild ride.