In his latest Slice, Gasant Abarder has all but given up on radio stations in Cape Town who are sliding into a downward trajectory, thanks to mediocre content and zero innovation.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here, exclusive to Cape {town} Etc.
Can someone please help? My wireless is broken. It’s been like this for a while so I’ve turned to listening to Robin Adams’s Feel Good Friday mixes or podcasts in the car. No, I don’t need an auto electrician to sort out the radio. What I mean is that radio in Cape Town is broken. I can’t listen to it any longer as it is hardly innovative or entertaining.
In particular, the music stations play about 30% music and the rest is waffle. Of course, there are exceptions.
John Maytham has no equal and is the undisputed king of talk radio. Bruce Whitfield makes an idiot like me understand business. Then there are my other favourites like Shafiq Morton, Aden Thomas, Lunga Singama and Suga – to name but a few. The emphasis on a few!
Other firm favourites are EB Inglis and Guy McDonald – the latter who is bizarrely without a job. And look no further than Carl Wastie for the future of radio.
But most mornings or afternoons on respective school runs, I’m flipping from station to station.
The breakfast show on the station that claims it will make you feel great is just downright offensive with the lead presenter putting on fake Indian or black accents that are passed off as prank calls. On a music radio station, we want music, not 10-minute links of self-indulgent nonsense.
My Heart sinks when I hear a sports bulletin on a Monday afternoon reporting on Saturday’s rugby match where clichés like the “captain’s arm band” (which isn’t a thing in rugby), “a few South African flags on that leader board” and my personal pet hate: “wall to wall premier league action”. But no real substance of key featured matches. It’s sloppy and lazy.
Elsewhere, I lose my Smile when I hear some of the presenters on the newest kid on the commercial radio block that tries to be a 90s version of the station that claims to give you music to make you feel great. And I lose all Hope and it’s not Good when I tune into that other station that was once rightfully Cape Town’s official sound.
It is clear that like with terrestrial TV and regional newspapers, that radio in our city has lost its way. Audiences go hyperlocal to community stations because they can hear someone that sounds like them and speaks to their issues on the airwaves.
I had a tenuous relationship with commercial radio that lasted exactly five months before I decided it wasn’t for me. Back then, Kfm and CapeTalk were run by Colleen Louw – the one MBA grad I know who can actually turn an idea into reality. She would call me if the news on the music station went over time and the show producers were made to watch the clock like a hawk.
“Take it back to the music,” was her mantra.
But she was constantly innovating to grow audiences and revenue. Katy Katopodis was the driving force of the best radio news service in SA that serviced both Kfm and CapeTalk as well as stations up north. I might not have agreed with her micro-management style but she created a multimedia news monster few could emulate. She would never allow a sports presenter on any of the four stations her Eyewitness News product serviced to busk their way through a bulletin.
But here is the crux of the matter: radio has fallen into mediocrity precisely because labour practices are questionable.
Presenters get rolled from one contract to the next not knowing if they’re going to be axed or not. True story: a stand in presenter I know gets paid R200 an hour per shift. It is criminal and there is seemingly no regard for basic conditions of employment. It’s become a lot about who you know and what doors can be opened and what freebies they can get you and less about real talent.
If radio continues on this downward trajectory in the Mother City, it is only a matter of time before audiences kick them to the kerb for #FeelGoodFriday mixes or Spotify. And the finger of blame will be squarely on the station managers and programme managers who claim to innovate but instead only imitate.
So, I ask again, can someone please fix my radio?
Picture: Unsplash