At a media seminar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal last year Professor Keyan Tomaselli welcomed some of the guests by inviting us onto a balcony with a spectacular view. Following a line from the institution’s carefully manicured gardens immediately below, our eyes were directed down the Berea ridge to the city skyline, then across the harbour to the Point precinct development and the Bluff. With an expansive gesture the good professor explained what we were seeing. ”On a clear day,” he said, ”you can just make out the class struggle from here.”
Quite. The Durban metropole may be South Africa’s most important economic hub after Gauteng, famously beating Cape Town on national output, but its social challenges are legion. According to eThekweni municipal manager Dr. Michael Sutcliffe, writing in the Sunday Tribune last October, ”more than 40% of all households in the city are truly poor”. Unemployment and HIV/Aids are equally devastating issues; in a recent piece in The Mercury Professor Malegapuru Makgoba included the following caveat: ”It is, of course, hard to wax lyrical about natural and cultural beauty if you are homeless and hungry. Durban has high unemployment levels, a serious housing shortage and an HIV/Aids crisis—”
So what’s this undercurrent of optimism about then? Aside from the natural charms, what civic virtues was Professor Makgoba moderating? The finale to The Mercury piece explains: ”Given the evident commitment of government, business and community leaders, in decades to come all of Durban’s inhabitants will be in a position to appreciate this wonderful city.” And then there’s this from Sutcliffe, further down in the aforementioned Sunday Tribune piece: ”In less than two years we have already achieved much in making it possible to improve quality of life for local residents, protect the environment and help to create world-class industrial zones—Our economic growth rates are turning the corner from being rather sluggish in national terms to growth that appears well in excess of 3% a year.”
As one would expect, Durban’s media aren’t exempt from the benefits of the turnaround. Some perspective on how disheartening things looked not too long ago can be gleaned from an interview this magazine published in early 2003 with Graeme King, then managing director of Independent Newspapers KZN. King pointed out at the time that when he arrived in Durban in 1997 the city boasted 50 JSE-listed companies, a number that had dwindled to 15 by 2002. The effect of fewer local corporates on advertising revenue, King said, was a matter that concerned him greatly. Today, many of those companies have either returned or are about to – the booming office parks in Umhlanga Ridge are ample evidence that the city is back in the crosshairs of the big national and multinational brands. And King’s replacement Howard Plaatjes, currently general manager of Independent Newspapers KZN, is decidedly upbeat.
”The economic growth is clearly reflected in the outperformance in advertising and circulation revenues reflected in each of our titles,” says Plaatjes. ”This has in turn helped to support even more reinvestment in our products in respect of quality content generation and paging. We cannot single out any of our titles as having benefited more than the other, but perhaps we can say with some conviction that the growth of the property sector is clearly evident in the Sunday Tribune.”
Strictly speaking, only two of the six titles within the Independent Newspapers KZN stable are up on current ABCs against the period January to June 2002 (arguably the last reporting period before the start of the economic turnaround), but it’s the growth on Zulu-language daily Isolezwe (from 27,475 Jan-Jun ’02 to 65,109 Jul-Dec ’04) that has translated into an overall circulation rise for the group. The other increase over the period is on the Post, which grew from 37,071 to 42,626 average copies sold. (Over the same period The Mercury has dropped from 40,400 to 39,343, The Daily News from 56,020 to 51,194, Independent on Saturday from 62,197 to 56,216, and Sunday Tribune from 113,152 to 109,774).
As The Media reported in March this year (”Untapped Markets”), Independent Newspapers isn’t the only winner in the phenomenon that is KwaZulu-Natal’s vernacular newspaper space. Andy Stanton, Ilanga‘s internal manager of strategy and advertising, attributes the surge in this niche to the simple yet momentous fact that ”more people in the region are coming into the economy, and more are reading newspapers”.
While not as dramatic as Isolezwe‘s circulation growth against the reporting period January to June 2002, Ilanga‘s rise from 95,817 to 103,597 (Jul-Dec ’04) is significant when you consider that the title is 102 years old – and therefore coming off an established base. On advertising revenue, the bi-weekly Ilanga tracks at an average of R2-million per month versus Isolezwe‘s R1,5-million (Nielsen Media Research), with the former growing at around 20% per annum (Newspaper Advertising Bureau) and the latter at upwards of 40% (Nielsen Media Research).
Umafrika, the region’s third vernacular title, doesn’t submit to an ABC audit. ”It’s a conscious decision,” says Stanton, who’s also a shareholder in this title. ”We know exactly where we want to be, but don’t need unnecessary pressure. It damages us.” Unaudited sales figures for Umafrika are in the region of 20,000 and ad revenue at around R150,000 per month (Newspaper Advertising Bureau), but Stanton is confident that the curve on the highbrow Zulu title will follow the rest of the segment.
Beyond the vernacular market, it’s on the production and infrastructure level that growth in KwaZulu-Natal’s mainstream newspaper sector is most apparent. In 2002 Natal Witness Printing and Publishing launched operations on a state-of-the-art printing press that had been bought from Koenig and Bauer in Germany at a cost of R50-million. A direct competitor to Independent Newspaper’s much older press in Durban, the Pietermaritzburg-based group scored an early coup by grabbing the management and printing contract on Ilanga away from the O’Reilly conglomerate, who at the time had just launched Isolezwe. Today, according to managing director Piet le Roux, ”the printer runs three shifts a day, sitting constantly at 70% capacity.”
The part Media24-owned company also has a network of private distribution contractors taking titles up and down the KwaZulu-Natal coast, into the region’s interior, and as far as Gauteng. Outside of The Witness, Weekend Witness, Ilanga and a sizeable chunk of freesheets, it handles provincial printing and distribution for Daily Sun, Soccer Laduma, Mail & Guardian, City Press and Rapport.
So are we seeing a shift in the balance of power here? More to the point, is the competition up the N3 threatening Independent’s historical dominance of the KwaZulu-Natal newsprint supply chain? ”I take it that your question is posed at our production capacities?” Plaatjes asks rhetorically. ”Any complacent market leader is always under threat. This is certainly not the case in our business. Our presses are amongst the best in the country with strong maintenance programmes and with experienced engineers. Printers can have the latest presses but it is the outputs that count. A case in point is that both The Mercury and The Witness are finalists in the 2005 Frewin, McCall and Joel Mervis competition. Our presses are only starting to warm up to their true potential.”
Of course these two groups had been competing for a couple of years before Pietermaritzburg got a new press. The Witness has been publishing non-stop since 1846, the longest unbroken run of any title in the country, and The Mercury isn’t far behind (since 1852). In that time they’ve had the odd go at each other’s markets. When Pietermaritzburg was reinstated as the provincial capital in 2004 it was time for The Mercury to venture inland yet again.
Not that one can blame them. Restoration of the Pietermaritzburg’s former status led to a 25% year-on-year increase in volume advertising on the The Witness and Weekend Witness, according to Natal Witness Printing and Publishing’s national sales and marketing manager Dave Erasmus. Adds Le Roux: ”We are now the hub of political power in the province. That’s had an economic impact and it’s attractive for everybody.” But while it makes sense that The Mercury is back in Maritzburg, such attempts have failed before (as The Witness has failed when looking towards Durban). Why should this time be different?
”We have always believed that the city needs to be informed of issues much more widely than any other title in that market currently can,” says Plaatjes. ”This is even a bigger requirement now that Pietermaritzburg is the provincial capital —[w]e will argue that there is no other title available in KwaZulu-Natal that can serve the needs of the Pietermaritzburg business and entrepreneurial community better than The Mercury.”
For their part, Natal Witness Printing and Publishing aren’t playing dead. They’re confident that The Mercury‘s sales in Pietermaritzburg haven’t hurt The Witness (ABCs on the latter are down an insignificant 300 copies, to 23,514 Jul-Dec 2004), and they’ve been coming back at Independent in the weekly market. ”Weekend Witness is what we’re proudest of,” says Erasmus. ”We saw a gap in the Durban market for a good Saturday paper.” Launched in September 2003, the Weekend Witness has quickly risen to a respectable 31,073 sales (ABC Jul-Dec 2004). That said, although it competes head on with the Independent on Saturday, this new title hasn’t really dented its opponent either. ”We haven’t taken a lot off them,” admits Erasmus. ”It seem like we’ve brought on new readers.”
Freesheets are another area where the old rivals battle over printing contracts and KwaZulu-Natal’s available adpsend. The Pietermaritzburg group own The Mirror and have stakes in a number of other titles, including South Coast Fever, The Greytown Gazette and Howick’s Village Talk. Independent Newspapers are shareholding partners with Caxton in the Highway Mail group, which in turn owns a significant stake in Rising Sun. The largest independent publisher competing against this convoluted arrangement is Tabloid Newspapers.
”There is only so much adpsend available,” says Tabloid Newspaper’s managing director Rishaad Mahomed. His seven titles include Phoenix Tabloid, which ”started paying for itself from day one,” and the Northern Star, which distributes 28,000 copies in the moneyed suburbs of Durban North and Umhlanga, but then he’s got to cover the costs of his own distribution network. ”We’re trying to make ourselves attractive, but the competition is tough.”
Yep, it’s not easy being independent, but Mahomed’s been managing it since 1993. In the magazine space, KwaZulu-Natal’s most successful publisher Atoll Media also started out in the proverbial garage; it has since gone on to invigorate the national youth market with the backing of Media24 (through Touchline Media).
The big-selling title in Atoll Media’s stable is Saltwater Girl, with current average sales of 35,001(ABC Jul-Dec 2004). The other titles are more modest – Blunt at 18,329 and ZigZag at 14,444 – although it appears this is right where managing director Craig Sims wants them. ”Marketers have been saying we don’t have the numbers, but in the youth market it’s different. 20,000 cool people is better than 100,000 dorks. That’s what the youth are about.”
Fair point. Still, cool people or not, what’s better than an audience of 2,127-million, especially when it translates into revenues northwards of R200-million a year? Those are the Rams and Nielsen figures on Kagiso Media’s East Coast Radio, which dominates KwaZulu-Natal media at a level print can’t approach.
”We’re up against a giant,” says Pamela Pillay, assistant station manager of P4 KZN, which is hovering just shy of 700,000 listeners. ”There are more regional stations in Cape Town, here it’s just East Coast and ourselves.” Pillay takes solace from the fact that (unlike East Coast) her ”strictly urban” station has consistently increased listenership through word-of-mouth, and that stabilisation of ownership (they’re 100% owned by the Makana Investment Corporation) will facilitate a ”real marketing strategy” and generate further growth.
Another difference Pillay cites between East Coast and the greenfields station is that the former has 17 transmitters versus her three (one in Durban, one in Pietermaritzburg, and the last on the Bluff), which gives East Coast strong penetration in KwaZulu-Natal’s interior, particularly amongst the black market. So increasing the footprint is one more obvious source of growth for P4 KZN, and Pillay is currently waiting for the go-ahead from Icasa to erect new transmitters in the secondary metropoles Richards Bay and Newcastle.
She’ll need that extra reach, if for no other reason than the fact that a third commercial licence will shortly be granted in KwaZulu-Natal. Like the region in general, this is a market that’s itching to reach its potential. As Sims implies, success doesn’t necessarily mean you can sit back. ”You gotta grow. That’s capitalism, that’s what sucks about it.”