What began initially as a joke has given clear signs of becoming the reality. A disc-jockey once said that he did not have to study anything to be able to pass on the message from one person to another. The influx and impact of social media, especially on the youths, has buttressed the point.
Social media, the mobile Internet and the proliferation of new terrestrial channels are all threatening to send conventional African broadcasters out of business. The emphasis now is on making money in other to stay ahead of competition. Entertainment is the attraction and younger audiences are slipping quietly away. Make no mistake about it – the time has come to change the way broadcasters do their thing.
Kenya, in East Africa, used to be the beacon. Last March, many media practitioners there complained about feeling the heat of the digital transition. The pressure from an increased number of TV channels (140 of them) and the downturn in the economy have bitten hard.
In July 2016, the Nation Media Group announced that it was closing QTV, Nation FM and its Rwanda radio station KFM. In October 2016 Royal Media also announced job losses. The Standard Group made cuts earlier in 2015.
The Nation Media Group’s statement on the job losses put the blame firmly on the shift to digital: “We are cognizant of the changing trends of how are products are being consumed. In line with the new reality, we are reorganizing ourselves with the aim of transforming Nation Media Group into a 21st century company by embracing digital as the business model.”
But nobody really understands what the digital business model is and it is particularly frustrating for those who have held it up as the way forward. But nevertheless in this climate, it may be helpful to look at the hassles which African broadcast pioneers undergo while trying to come to terms with “all things digital” in very different ways. What is happening is what the academics call “hybridity”: as consumers of media, we are taking what we want from the media buffet that is available to us. And in doing so, how we watch, listen and read our media is changing.
It was when a Nollywood distributor, one of the biggest You Tube channel operators in Kenya, declared last September that he gets 120 million views a month, that some of us began to understand that African channel operators might be making cool money. Again, one of the better-known music video operators in the capital, Nairobi, Afri-Core, says quite modestly that he now gets 60 million views per month for his music videos. These numbers are simply from the group that used to key into conventional broadcast mode.
What is the way forward? An African broadcaster used to be a company that owned transmission infrastructure and produced content. And the part it spent most on producing was largely in-house: talk shows and news. It was vertically integrated from production to transmission. But with cable channels, many broadcasters no longer own the means of transmission. So it might be more sensible to talk about a media content company. What is that, you ask? A media content company produces content that connects with audiences through channels that make it money.
Just as the mobile operators now have to increase the data income, African broadcasters need to increase their incomes across every different channel: Free-To-Air – both terrestrial and satellite; mobile (through downloading and streaming platforms); Internet (through channels like You Tube); and social media (through digital advertising). International and regional sales need to be a first, not a last consideration. User-loyalty is won by staying with them throughout the day on whatever device or channel they are using.
For the entrepreneur who has separate radio and TV companies, perhaps now is the time to start thinking about creating as a first step a multimedia division. The next step is to develop a multimedia team that can work across various media. Yes, different media have different forms and demands but the skill will be in re-purposing content: for example, taking the sound track of a video and re-editing it for radio; or taking a local program and reshooting contextual material so that it can be sold to neighbours.
Finally, if one does not want to lose youth audiences, one needs to start employing producers who are the same age as these audiences (like Lucy K). Now is the time to run talent competitions for those in their twenties to get the next generation of talent on air. Without a radical shake-up, traditional African broadcasting – whether public or private – runs the danger of going down a steady slope into decline.
END (Pix – conventional Radio/Television stations
