Fm Radio App Download South Africa
Rochell Estrello
Young Zibonele FM and Bush Radio listeners, we found, were actively participating in the news processes at the radio stations. Especially when the stations tailored their news to draw in these communities. A station manager explained:
Social media, as seen in our study, can have a significant impact on the future of radio programming and news. It could lead to a dynamic shift towards more interactive and community-driven programming. This would sustain community radio and enhance its role as a vital source of alternative voices, diverse perspectives, and local engagement.
Apart from streaming and internet radio, there is also a growing trend of podcasting. This has arguably cemented audio broadcasting, in its various forms, as a key player in future mass media trends in the country.
Fast forward to 2022. A scan of some charts such as Chartable, which claims to rank podcasts based on popularity, shows that the most widely heard podcasts in South Africa are not, in fact, produced by South Africans. And all top 10 podcasts are in English. These trends run counter to what one observes in the radio landscape, where indigenous language radio stations attract more listeners than English ones.
The date of birth of online radio in South Africa is difficult to determine. No doubt the introduction of the internet in the early 1990s meant that those with access and means experimented with various forms of self-expression using the technology. As did the amateurs who first played around with radio in the 1920s.
But queries have been raised around the figures that online radio stations report in South Africa, which some claim have been inflated. Another issue is access to expensive data. New online stations will struggle to attract listeners who are not wealthier South Africans.
Bush Radio plays a vital role in engaging with local communities, addressing their concerns, and promoting social development. Bush Radio, as an independent community radio station, can continue to serve as a platform for local voices, fostering community dialogue and contributing to social cohesion.
Despite the challenges faced during the apartheid era and the subsequent legal battles and the current economic climate, Bush Radio has maintained its commitment to community radio. The station continues to serve its community with relevant programming, diverse voices, and new talent.
Sekibakiba Peter Lekgoathi (PhD, Minnesota) is presently at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as a Visiting Scholar in the UMAPS program. He is Associate Professor of History at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg where he teaches African history, American history, as well as the History of Globalization. He has published widely on the history of radio and its machinations in South Africa, both public and clandestine radio; the politics of ethnicity; the politics of knowledge production, with specific reference to the relationship between white anthropologists and black research assistants in Southern Africa; as well as on popular protests in parts of South Africa during the 1980s and early 1990s. He is currently working on a book manuscript on The Crystallization and Bifurcation of Ndebele Ethnicity in South Africa, 1960-2010.
The President of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Martin Stratmann (fifth from left), during a visit to the site of the MeerKAT radio telescope in the Karoo semi-desert region of South Africa with a German delegation.
There was joy and jubilation at the Southern Africa-Indian Ocean Division (SID) headquarters in Pretoria, South Africa, on March 6, 2022, when church leaders participated in the long-awaited launching of the Adventist World Radio (AWR) online radio station powered by SIDmedia. More than 150 people, including leaders and guests, attended the event.
Their transmitters may reach only a few miles, but community radio stations are enabling isolated communities across Africa to voice their own concerns. On air, ordinary citizens discuss issues that are central to them, such as gender relations and combatting HIV/AIDS. They share farming tips and income generation ideas and explore ways to improve education.
Millions in Africa remain voiceless, despite a multitude of new information outlets. Most media remain largely state controlled. But the tide of democracy sweeping the continent has seen governments loosening their grip on the airwaves. In 1985, notes the World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC, by its French initials), there were fewer than 10 independent radio stations on the entire continent. Today, South Africa alone has more than 150 community stations, and other countries are catching up.
The cost of setting up communications infrastructure is steep, however, especially in rural areas, where distances are vast and population densities are low. Most areas outside the major towns do not have the electricity necessary for operating land telephones or computers. Radios, by contrast, are inexpensive and can run on batteries or solar power. As a result, radio is by far the dominant mass medium in Africa. There is one radio receiver for every five people (compared with one telephone for every 100 people).
Mali has one of the strongest community radio networks in Africa. After the fall of the last one-party regime in 1991 and the end to an outright state monopoly of the means of communications, the information media blossomed. Today, Mali has more than 110 private radio stations; 86 of them are community radios, mostly rurally based.
Positive change is also happening at a personal level. Radio projects bring opportunities for community members to learn new skills, thus improving prospects for employment at commercial stations. In southern Mali, local technicians, facilitators and producers, as well as board members, took a training course run by a rural radio centre in Burkina Faso. Participants learned to operate equipment, produce programmes and manage a station. International organizations such as the Agence de la Francophonie and the Panos Institute have also conducted community media workshops.
According to AMARC, community media should not entail outsiders doing something for the community, but community members doing something for themselves. This implies owning and controlling the means of communication. But in Africa, few community radio stations are yet self-sustaining. When donor funding for a programme dries up, it usually spells the end of the project.
Across the continent, most community radios are funded primarily by external donor countries, church organizations, international development agencies and some advertising. Stations also rely on voluntary services, leaving them perpetually struggling to develop new talent as staff members move on. AMARC President Steve Buckley notes that state subsidies of community media are the norm in Europe and North America, but largely absent in Africa.
A scarcity of funding does mean, however, that small community radios generally operate with the barest of equipment. Stations are also isolated by a shortage of transport and telephones. Cell phones are helping somewhat, but are expensive. Access to the Internet is still a dream for many in rural areas.
In November 2020, South Africa regulator ICASA launched a consultation on draft regulation for licensing digital radio. The objectives of the draft regulation are to set out the framework for the introduction of DSB (digital sound broadcasting) services and prescribe the procedure for an Applicant seeking to provide DSB services.
On the 29th January 2019 the South African Broadcast Regulator ICASA granted a new eight month DAB+ trial licence which will provide coverage in Johannesburg/Pretoria Gauteng Province. 20 radio services drawn from the PBS, Commercial and Community Radio sectors will participate in the trial. On air date is planned mid-March 2019.
Phase 1 of the initial trial license period focused on network verification processes and this has now been completed. The 2nd phase which focused on audio and data testing has been completed. The new license phase focuses on closed listener group tests and further audio processing and data testing. The public broadcaster the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) applied for this new trial license on behalf of all the other radio broadcasters. South Africa is the first country in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to carry out DAB+ trials.
The regulator ICASA published in April 2019 the findings of its inquiry into the deployment of digital radio in South Africa, stating that spectrum scarcity and high transmission costs necessitate the consideration of digital radio. ICASA's draft regulation on implementation is anticipated during the current financial year (2019/20), following the government policy directive issued on 10 July 2020 to allow for the licensing of Digital Sound Broadcasting.
On May Day 1993, three years after Nelson Mandela walked free from prison and as the Apartheid government was negotiating the shape of the post-Apartheid order with the ANC, local activists, using a radio transmitter provided by German benefactors, started an illegal broadcast from Cape Town. They called it Bush Radio.
Established in 1936, the SABC provides a range of distinctive, creative and top-quality programs in all 11 official languages across its radio and television portfolio. The recent rollout of the dira! solution has helped the SABC to continue to achieve its mission to be a digitized national public broadcaster that provides compelling, informative, educational and entertaining content via all platforms.
The Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (BRC) was established in 2015, our role being to commission and oversee the delivery of radio and television audience measurement research for broadcasters, as well as the advertising and marketing industry.
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