In Part 2: How your bad competitor can keep you from greatness; how social media forever changed the way people consume content; radio and TV redefined as ‘custodians of context’ and ideas for innovation in audience capturing.

(Click here for Part 1)

How my bad competitor repositions me

The problem with the South African broadcasting landscape is that it is too much shaped by the SABC’s historic and current political bias.

The brand of news coverage provided by independent news media before and after South Africa’s transition to democracy is inextricably linked to how much the public broadcaster (or newspapers sympathetic to the government at the time) would skew or totally ignore stories of national importance.

Respected journalism schools at institutes of higher learning were themselves shaped during a time when the state machinery was working against the freedom of the press. No wonder the discourse is mostly about the virtues of good journalism, rather than innovation in reaching audiences.

Instead of a news organisation comparing itself to competitors, it should focus on its own quest for excellence.

We should talk about international best practices in terms of production values, look and feel, scheduling formats, integration of first and second phase journalism and new ways of content creation that will speak to modern consumption trends. In order to be a really good journalist, one must fully unlock the strengths of the medium that you are working in. Some South African newspapers are excellent at this, even though their medium is supposedly under greater threat than electronic media.

Only when we achieve excellence in television or radio production, underpinned with impeccable journalistic principles, we will capture the attention of our audience.

In South Africa, independent media should guard against getting themselves repositioned by the SABC’s brand of news.

As odd as this might sound, it is plausible that as strategists endeavour to rid the public of the broadcaster’s “propaganda perception”, they could advise SABC News to aggressively position itself as the one who does not always find fault with everything – the big patriotic hero.

It is a positive brand value that would sit very well with their target market – the overwhelming majority of South Africans who might feel that they are constantly being picked on by opposition parties and independent media for not being able to get anything right. There is a South Africa out there that looks very different from the newsroom or suburbia. And that South Africa often feels we judge the hell out of them.

“Perception is Reality” – and the danger is that independent media, in their quest to consistently expose all the wrongs in society, can end up with egg in their face. As much as we have a duty to shine that light of truth to expose the evil in the world, we also have a duty to help build a nation. The only way to build is to help your brother up when he falls.

It is a difficult balancing act that comes down to attitude. And by making people, instead of power politics, the centre of news coverage. And ask yourself twice if your cynical angle is really necessary.

Twitter killed the video star

The social media revolution has taken the world by storm. Facebook, Twitter and the myriad of other social networking communities have been around for some time. But as time goes on, user behaviour becomes more and more sophisticated.

Facebook pages, status updates, tweets and retweets, Google+’ing, Instagram and Flickr photo sharing, Foursquare check-ins, WordPress and Tumblr blogging, microblogging and content management are now so much part of people’s personal and business lives that a world without it would be unimaginable. Especially in countries with large populations who are online all the time.

The thinking in South African media circles has always been that the majority of the population is sheltered from this online revolution because we suffer from Internet discrimination, slow connections and limited access to bandwidth. That is all changing rapidly and with affordable smartphone deals available to more and more people, social media is gaining a much bigger foothold than initially thought.

Fortunately, most independent news companies in South Africa ensured that they are taking advantage of social media from the outset; thereby opening up a whole new market of consumers who are not attracted to traditional media, but want to have access to news.

When, during February 2013, the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court became the theatre for the Oscar Pistorius bail hearing frenzy, Twitter finally carved out its niche in South Africa and put the nail solidly in the coffin of TV and radio’s decades’ long hold on breaking news. Twitter was only able to do this because of its unique way of bringing people together in a social network.

The second-by-second rolling news coverage – broadcast into cyberspace by the pack of journalists and received into individualised feeds that the news companies have no control over, created a media phenomenon that simply cannot be matched. It was quite remarkable to be in the midst of it, experiencing the ups and downs of the courtroom storylines while witnessing the birth of new consumer behaviour.

Conversations with my TV – the nightly news reinvented

We live in the fast-paced world of 24-hour news, forever surrounded by a barrage of messages that vie for our attention.

24-hour news is a very important development in recent history and plays a big part in shaping the national discourse and in holding powerful people to account. If you are a despot and you are confronted with either 20 seconds of coverage in the nightly news or live cameras on you all of the time, the ball game changes considerably.

Consultants and media strategists will tell you the logic in this modern age of consumer choice is that people do not want to be subjected to appointment programming. And they definitely do not want to wait for 7 pm to hear the day’s news when they can get it on any other possible device at any time they want.

So at the world’s biggest broadcasters, their 24-hour cable or satellite news channels are regarded as flagships – shown off to the public with impressive sets that take centre stage in vast newsrooms.

In these newsrooms, the teams who produce the old-fashioned 30-minute nightly newscast for the free-to-air network channel sit in a corner and have to go and present their broadcast in lesser studios somewhere in the bowels of the building.

But why is it then that these heritage nightly broadcasts presented by stalwart anchors consistently rake in the biggest audience ratings for their channels while making the most money for the company?

The answer to that lies somewhere between access issues, the fact that humans are creatures of habit and most importantly that they want to see someone they know and trust put all of the days confusing messages in a context that makes sense to them.

Most people are not news savvy and do not interpret or analyse the stories for themselves. Or they just do not have the mind space for it in their busy days. They rely on their trusted TV broadcast to do it for them in a short, concise way so that they can go on with their lives.

In that lays enormous responsibility for editors, but also great opportunities for nightly and 24-hour news at a time when the Social Spring is challenging their traditional hold on information sharing.

Innovation

The way that all radio and TV news providers should position themselves in the future is to become the custodians of context.

All output, whether a pre-packaged insert, the way the news copy and intros are written, the live interviews – everything must be more than just the story.

As a way to convey context, South African broadcast journalism can do with bringing the focus back to ordinary people and tailor-make each minute of output to the needs of their target audience.

How does the story relate to the target audience? How do the copy and visuals relate to the target audience? How does the graphic relate to the target audience? How does the anchor relate to the target audience? Because the more they do relate, the more you will see your audience ratings soar.

For one, we can do with a shake-up in the way that public and independent media produce their holy cows of nightly newscasts and prime time radio shows.

Radio current affairs is an outpost of an almost lost art in modern radio production. Documentary style audio reporting forms vivid pictures in people’s imagination. Sadly it is lost in a fast-paced world where the formats of those shows do not keep track of the behaviour of its desired target audience. It is safe to assume most people can only spend 20 minutes of their valuable time with your product. Also, the most consistent thing about your broadcast is that people are coming and going all the time. Then make sure every 20-minute sweep contains a good overall mix of your product. Do updated headlines and forward selling at least every 15 minutes. Do not be scared to repeat good bits 45, 60 or 90 minutes later, depending on your strategy.

As a good host would do, make the time they spend with you as captivating as possible. If it has been worth their while, they will remember you the next time when they are looking for good content to consume.

In TV, South African channels are mostly good at the classic packaged report and understand what makes it great. But beyond that something as simple as the signposting of rundowns can make a huge difference to a broadcast. Do you always have to present the headlines and forward teases, in the same way, every night? Those little intros, links into ad breaks and outros are the golden thread that makes the broadcast human and is almost more important to get right than anything else. Co-presenters should rehearse their on-air interaction so that they can come across as natural as possible in order to captivate the viewers. 24-hour channels should not repeat the same headline copy over and over. At least change the wording every time, if not the angle. Especially if you want to win quarter hours during living room viewing at night.

How much creativity is sacrificed in news production because editors are afraid that they will confuse the technical crew or catch the anchor and even the viewer off guard? Hundreds of excuses are made to not be creative and innovative. It’s human nature, but should be challenged every day.

However important the 30 minute TV current affairs show will remain for many years to come, the separation between news and current affairs is entirely out of touch with modern content consumption. People are watching your broadcast now, so they want their context now. They don’t want to wait until Sunday night for analysis. They have lives.

Let the news content be a mix of hard news and context. If it is the ten year anniversary of the Iraq war, and it means something to your audience, don’t just use the story hard as a filler voice-over with Reuters visuals that every other competitor is running as well.

Get desk journalists to research the story. Get archive material. Produce a package. Intro it hard, go into the package, get a studio guest to analyse, have graphics ready to aid the memorability of what the guest is saying. Run an online poll in the week and then display a graphic with a pie chart to show what your audience thinks about the issue – the more you can draw your audience into your broadcast on an ‘official’ level the better. Think vox pops on steroids. Speak to your audience and analysts via Skype from their living rooms.

Plan it all in advance. Do not sacrifice your normal hard news run, just bring more depth and context to stories that your target audience is confronted with every day. If you do not give them the context, they will go and find someone else to give it to them – probably the newspapers, or their online versions.

Most importantly, the context war will be won only if you deploy experienced anchors and reporters throughout. Get the senior guys out of the management offices back onto the air. The audience wants to hear the news from credible people who are at ease with themselves and the topic at hand.

For the one who gives better context to his audience, with a real heart for what is important and relevant to the ordinary guy on the street, will win. And ensure the relevance of traditional media for years to come.

The way to compete with individualised social media feeds is to become one of them.

When an hour of broadcast output is over, I want to feel that I have just had a conversation with my TV.

Gustav Greyling is an independent media strategist and freelance TV news anchor (gustavgreyling.co.za).

(Click here for Part 1)

In Part 1 of “Conversations with my TV” we will explore the state of mind of a good journalist; how transmission of radio waves created enormous potential for good and evil and how good can come out of evil.

If you do not know your sound bite from your Q&A, your angle from your embargo, or your in-cue from your out-cue, you will probably struggle to fit into the world of ENG.

While the 1990s Canadian TV show ENG may have inspired many a broadcast journalist to live their dream, newsrooms all over the world and here in South Africa should ask themselves if they are still in touch with the ordinary people who rely on them for their daily news.

Vox populi (“the voice of the people”) is often lost in today’s world where big media means big power and controlling the Fourth Estate is no longer a noble quest of representing the voiceless masses.

How do world broadcasters like CNN, Sky News, Al Jazeera, Russia Today or the NBC Nightly News get it right to marry solid journalistic principles with revenue objectives, while keeping their 21st century culturally diverse, tech-savvy, socially connected global audiences engaged to their traditional TV screens? Or do they?

The Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons

The Protestant Reformation was one of the biggest freedom struggles that man has ever seen. When Martin Luther and John Calvin stood up for what they believed in, they had no idea that they ignited a force of change so powerful that the world would be pulled right out of the dark Middle Ages.

Fortunately for them, a new social media technology was on the cards at exactly the right time. The printing press suddenly propelled their small-town campaign above the line. For the first time, ordinary peasants were getting their heads around the phenomenon of pamphlets and found themselves engaged in their version of water cooler talk. It was the realisation that the stronghold on ideas had been broken, that took the world by storm and set the events in motion that would reshape life as they knew it.

Above all, we can thank the Reformers for the advent of parliamentary democracy. Their aversion to authority and the corruption that it brings inspired revolutionary waves and bloodshed all over Europe. In the end, the Clergy and the Noblemen (the First and Second Estates) were either overthrown or forced into power-sharing pacts with the Commoners – the Third Estate. Ever since then the people shall govern, while the rich are having their cake.

But alas, the Third Estate has become a ruling class of their own and even though elected by popular vote, absolute power diligently corrupts – causing an ever-widening cliff between the politicians and the bourgeois.

Enter the Fourth Estate.

It was one day in 1787 when the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons were in Westminster assembled that Edmund Burke remarked:

…there are Three Estates in Parliament; But, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than they all.

The Age-Old Profession

In his textbook, Broadcast Journalism Andrew Boyd devotes an entire chapter to finding the elusive answer to the question “what is news?”

Suffice to say that news is a collection of stories about current events that spark our interest because of their relevance to us and impact on our lives, income, and emotions. That’s the classroom theory and what we spend most of our time on.

But then people lie. They do not want us to know about the things they have done that will impact our lives. They try to hide their shame and guilt from us.

So instead of just reporting the news, the journalist’s profession is all about being overtly skeptical and wary about any ‘fact’ that is presented to them. They can smell a lie from a mile and devote their lives to catching shady perpetrators. We then laud them when their stories shine the light of truth into dark corners to expose lies and deceit by governments and mobsters alike.

We need them on this earth more than ever, and especially in a society where the veil of secrecy and spin is so easily pulled before our eyes, it is thanks only to those relentless journalists that we know what is really going on and are able to make informed decisions.

But have we created a monster? The qualities required of a good journalist are in stark contrast to those we normally seek in a trusting friendship, loving relationship, and overall healthy community. The more cynical journalists become, the more they are unlike the masses that they supposedly serve or represent. The masses are generally more conservative in world view; more convicted in faith and more trusting of people than the average newsroom.

The danger lies in the considerable power yielded by the Fourth Estate in its ability to make editorial decisions and act as gatekeepers of what we end up seeing, hearing and reading. The mirror they hold up to reflect society back to itself is inevitably tainted by their own experiences and prejudices.

The Ripples of Power

It’s just a network of isolated transmission towers.

Tirelessly sending out radio waves to millions of household receivers.

But Guglielmo Marconi even received a Nobel prize for inventing wireless telegraphy in 1909 because of the countless opportunities it opened up for the free flow of messages.

Nobleman John Reith conceptualised the lofty ideals of public service broadcasting for the United Kingdom in the early 1920s. He had seen the potential for the broadcast platform to educate, inform, entertain and have consideration for all points of view. At about the same time, the Americans went full-on commercial as they realised how much money they could make from the new platform.

But before the technology was even in its teens, dictators’ mouths watered for the control they could exert over people by firmly holding onto those towers of power and indoctrinate the populace with their evil intent.

His Master’s Voice

In 2013 one is tempted to say that the Reithian ideals of public service broadcasting for the greater national good are totally lost on South African society.

The turmoil and upheavals at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) are as bad as it has ever been. No sooner had an Act of Parliament established the statutory body in 1936 or it succumbed to political Masters who were desperate to keep strategic control over the broadcast platform – and by extension their constituents.

The Masters may have changed but their methods are the same. Since half of the South African population relies solely on the SABC for their information, it is extremely difficult for the politicians to keep their hands off it.

Sadly, as the political battle for the heart of the SABC intensifies, the more crippling it becomes for the strategic direction of the national public broadcaster.

Judging by what comes out of the screen or out of the speaker, one is able to make a fairly good assessment of what is going on behind the scenes in Auckland Park.

The most viewed newscasts during prime time seem like the holy cows. Its formats have not really changed in decades. It still caters to a 1990s way of content consumption.

Thirty minutes of pre-packaged reports, some voice-overs, some international ‘NIBs’, a voice-over graphic for the financial indicators, a sports segment during the second quarter-hour and finally a weather report on a map seemingly designed in 1976. Sanitized; safe; not very creative; very little critical analysis; no input from the public at large.

On top of that, the almost sacrosanct separation between newscasts and current affairs shows is reminiscent of a bygone era that does not provide for modern consumer behaviour.

As with any organisation, there are pockets of excellence – usually driven by creative individuals or small teams who are determined to excel amidst all the adversity. They get streetwise within the colossus of an organisation and learn to navigate their way around all the red tape. With trade-offs, they get many things right and deserve all the recognition that they are not getting.

The latest announcement that the prime time English news broadcast on SABC3 will be extended to an hour (18:30-19:30) is one of the smartest scheduling moves the channel and SABC News have done in many years.

It capitalises on its production strengths at a time when the Corporation, because of its financial woes, is struggling to procure the best entertainment content for its commercial channel. It is also a good example of clear positioning against competitors.

The question remains how it will prevent the millions of thumbs on remote controls nationwide to switch over to e.tv at 7 pm in order to get the real, unbiased news. It will take a lot of smart and unconventional programming tactics to entice the viewer through all four those quarter hours and deliver a substantial mass audience to the channel’s prime time advertisers.

The greatest challenge will be to deliver content that is relevant to the channel’s viewers. The bad perception that SABC News is the conveyor of government propaganda is possibly its biggest nemesis. Any media strategist would tell them, without a solid commitment to change that, their plan is dead in the water.

Broadcasting at its Best

The period during South Africa’s transition to full democracy in the early 1990s was good for the SABC. Their rather unimaginative payoff line at the time turned out to be some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Ever since the late 1980s, the establishment started to lose its grip on many of the managers at the Corporation. Winds of change were sweeping through the hallways of Broadcasting Centre. During the vacuum before the new rulers fully asserted their authority, many journalists, strategists, and leaders had the unique opportunity to start serving their professions instead of Pretoria. That’s if they were able to break free from the old habit of self-censorship.

Still, in the years leading up to South Africa’s first one-man-one-vote democratic election, the broadcaster had a lot of practice. For many South Africans, the TV1 prime time show Agenda provided the window on their future fellow South Africans and political leaders that they otherwise would not have known. Under the intense scrutiny of all political groupings who demanded equal exposure, it was raw, live, unedited and often heated.

It is one of the best ways to make your audience ratings spike. Put a newsmaker on the spot and make him respond live to probing questions under glaring lights and cameras. There is no greater test of a man’s character. The viewers get the chance to see them sink or swim without any editorial gatekeeping. They get the chance to really form an opinion about the person.

As the election drew closer the powers that be conceptualised South Africa’s first multi-lingual 24-hour news channel in order to cover one of the biggest news events of the decade. For the first time since the inception of television in the mid-1970s, the SABC unceremoniously pulled their regular services off the air – including TV1, the biggest channel in South African television history with enormous market share, brand awareness, audience loyalty and above all a commercial money-making monster.

On 27 April 1994, the Election ’94 broadcast went live and provided 24-hour coverage in English – 30 minutes on “Channel 1”, followed by 30 minutes on “Channel 2”. The alternative half hours were filled with coverage in indigenous African languages, including Afrikaans. On top of that, all SABC radio stations provided extensive coverage. An enormous number of reporters were deployed in the field. In the custom-built Johannesburg nerve centre, a mix of old and new anchors hosted in-studio discussions and analysis. They held the mirror up, and South Africa was watching. It lasted for days.

In the end, the critics loved it. For many SABC journalists, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Darryl Ascone of The Star wrote: “They might not be as slick as the Allen Pizzeys or Peter Arnetts of the world, they nevertheless had a better understanding of what the election meant to those taking part in it”.

The hard and honest truth is that the SABC was able to pull off that massive broadcast and all subsequent major relaunches and restructuring because of relatively stable management, good foresight by its strategists and a visionary, empowered leader at the helm. Without stability at the very top, the organisation will inevitably fall apart, and we will see it come out of the screen.

There is indeed hope for a vibrant national public broadcaster with its vast transmission networks and studio infrastructure. If the new leaders are willing to learn from the past as they regroup to chart the way forward.

End of part 1 of “Conversations with my TV”

Coming up in Part 2: How your bad competitor can keep you from greatness; how social media forever changed the way people consume content; radio and TV redefined as ‘custodians of context’ and ideas for innovation in capturing an audience.

Gustav Greyling is an independent media strategist and freelance TV news anchor (gustavgreyling.co.za).

This article, aimed at the advertising trade and media industry,  was written on behalf of Jacaranda FM and published in The Media in 2009.

The first decade of the 21st century is all but over, and in another 10 years from now, broadcast radio as a publicly targeted medium will be roughly 100 years old. And they say the end is near. One cannot help but wonder how the centenary celebrations of “broadcasting for the people” will look. Current trends predict a bunch of ageing radio people reminiscing about the golden age of format clocks and TSL.

When one is confronted with a question like “How do I attract the next generation listener to my radio station?” in 2009, the answer differs vastly from the 1989 answer to the same question. Back then, it was relatively easy to figure out that the most popular personalities, playing the most popular songs would attract the most listeners.

These days we’re confronted with a generation of youngsters who shrug at the mere idea of linear consumption. They don’t want to use a medium where they are subjected to someone else’s idea of what they should hear. They don’t want to be forced to tune in at specific times. Basically, they don’t want to be told how to consume.

Jerry Del Colliano writes on his “Inside Music Media” blog that traditional terrestrial radio is now a destination entertainment medium for available listeners – the Baby Boomers and older members of generation X – and as such, is still a very good business model if those markets are properly targeted and catered for. Beyond that, his view is that radio has little future.

Now, how do radio companies survive this existential onslaught and deliver a “next-generation consumer” to its dividend-hungry shareholders who thought they invested in a fail-safe business model, of minimum expense, in return for enormous advertising profit? Del Colliano says radio content providers, marketers, and salespeople must embrace alternative ways to entertain Generation Y – terrestrial radio operators should become the drivers of mobile, internet and Wi-Fi entertainment for a youth generation that rivals the Baby Boomers in population size. The role of social networking, mashups, and viral marketing is a key component of modern-day content creation – using the next generation’s amazing ability to ‘spread the word’.

The radio station must, therefore, produce dual content platforms – one for the older terrestrial audience, and one for the tech-savvy, content-hungry and ease-loving ‘next-generation consumer’.

In true Web 2.0 spirit, Del Colliano is heavily criticized on his own blog for representing a view on generation Y consumption that is exclusive to industrialised and highly individualistic Western societies. The view is that he cannot just assume the kids won’t listen to the radio anymore. Especially not when it comes to developing countries or other cultures.

South Africa, for one, is still somewhat sheltered from the full onslaught of the technology revolution because of our bandwidth issues and disparities in our society. FM radio can also thank the lack of first-world public transport for its dedicated, in-car audience during peak hours. On top of that, a lot of South African radio stations are culturally unique and significant – thereby already shaping the social networking community of the future.

In October 2008, during a study trip to the Deutsche Welle Academy in Bonn and Berlin, Germany, our group of radio professionals from several countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa had a lengthy discussion about what German programming expert Thomas Roth called Radio 2.0 and how it differs from traditional radio. He called Radio 1.0 the “retail model” – where the product offering is designed to satisfy “most people” most of the time – generating maximum sales by generating a maximum audience. And you generate maximum audience by being “safe” – only the popular hits, only the content that will appeal to most people – nothing edgy.

Radio 2.0, on the other hand, is content-based added value – the product offering is tailor-made to satisfy individual needs. In the process, it also brings like-minded people together in social networking communities. It satisfies a deeper and much more personal need than Radio 1.0 would ever be able to; by giving choice back to the listener. It does away with the ‘sheep mentality’ of large retail. The conclusion was that, in the long run, Radio 1.0 should theoretically not survive Radio 2.0.

Radio people are the most loyal listeners you could imagine. We are passionately in love with radio as a medium and to us, it’s truly a labour of love – at the service of our listeners. Even though none of them listen as intently as we do. Unfortunately, it will also be radio people doing things “My Way” who are to blame if the revolution passes us by and radio did not transform and adapt quick enough to hook the next generation listener by becoming a cool and consumable technology again.

One thing is clear: if radio wants to survive this time around, a total paradigm shift, away from linear output is critical. The radio station has to be turned into a multimedia content provider, where the web site becomes the central hub of content distribution and the traditional radio station is secondary to that – a way to market the web portal, a showcase of the content highlights available online, a soundtrack to the content ‘mother’ brand.

It will require substantial investment in content generation (more than what is currently needed to sustain a commercial music station) and it will require some radio people to think differently in order to capture the imagination of Generation Y.

This article, aimed at the advertising trade and media industry, was written on behalf of Jacaranda FM and published on Bizcommunity in 2009.

Family life, the outdoors and an innate ability to enjoy themselves coupled with undying loyalty to South Africa and commitment towards making this country work.

Jacaranda 94.2 Music Manager Gustav Greyling says these are just some of the heartfelt values uncovered by in-depth listener research that aptly illustrate the ‘pleasure and the pain’ associated with capturing the hearts and minds of this highly discerning market…

Jacaranda 94.2 has come a long way since the highly-regulated ‘days of old’ when it was a government-owned station. Today, it’s South Africa’s largest independent regional radio station and continues to strike a massive chord with its sizeable 625 000 (25%) Afrikaans listener base.

A key reason for this is the station’s massive investment in ongoing listener research that has given it a unique vantage point when it comes to keeping up with the hopes and dreams of this vital segment of its target market.

One of our most interesting and exciting findings is that at some point during the last couple of years, there was a definitive shift towards thinking ‘Afrikaans is cool’. But it wasn’t always like that. In 1994, Afrikaans was seen as very unfashionable, old and highly-regulated by the apartheid government.

This was hugely damaging to Afrikaans language and culture and there was considerable resistance by the alternative Afrikaans music movement. For example, alternative artists like Koos Kombuis or Johannes Kerkorrel would ridicule the ‘safe’, establishment type celebrities like Rina Hugo and Bles Bridges – almost like an Afrikaner in-fight.

But somehow, 15 years later – and this is the part that is hard to understand – we’re at a point where those old alternatives and the iconic ‘establishment celebrities’ come together at massive annual events – such as Skouspel, the KKNK or InniBos – and happily share a stage and sing one another’s songs.

It’s almost as if the Afrikaans speaking market has decided to put its differences aside for the greater good. No doubt this was preceded by a perceived loss of relevance in South African society, but it was also influenced by the fact that Afrikaans culture is no longer regulated by the government. In fact, in the 15 years since democracy, the Afrikaans market has been set free and is now able to flourish in an open market society.

This has led to an Afrikaans cultural boom, with the advent of art and music festivals across the country; massive support for Afrikaans music at live events, extremely healthy CD sales; Afrikaans-only TV channels; official recognition at the South African Music Awards and last, but not least, Karen Zoid singing at the presidential inauguration.

The Afrikaans creative community worked very hard to achieve this level of success and for them, the ‘mainstream breakthrough’ that is happening now, is the ultimate ‘cherry on the top’. It’s only recently that mainstream media has begun to pick up on this shift in audience preferences. Fortunately a station like ourselves a great head start.

But how exactly does it benefit the bottom-line to be a bilingual radio station in South Africa in 2009? Well for one, it opens the door for historically separate communities to get together around a shared value system, and thereby contribute towards nation-building, while maintaining a strong Afrikaans heritage brand position.

In light of this, Jacaranda 94.2 plays all the favourite Afrikaans pop hits and supports the local artists at events like the annual InniBos Lowveld National Arts Festival in Nelspruit and the Deuriemikke Karnaval in Pretoria.

Another key focus area for the station’s Afrikaans content quota, relates to our news bulletins, with 50% read in Afrikaans. These news bulletins are based on stories that affect its audience – which is largely Afrikaans – as directly as possible. Our approach to news is giving listeners something of extra value so we offer listeners stories with a localised, listener-centric angle.