Death by Local FM stations

Death by local FM stations

I am a blue collar worker... well maybe not excatly but I think you get my drift. I get into the car heading to office round about 6.00am for an hour’s drive to work and then I am in office where local radio is not broadcasting as we get about tasks.  In the evening I check in again to find out what stories are on our local Frequency Modulation (FM) Stations. In otherwise, FM radio is normally a couple of hours in the car to and from work. I specify FM stations because for some reason Short Wave (SW) Amplitude Modulation (AM) and Medium Wave (MW) stations are a thing of the past (no offence to Uganda Broad Casting Corporation). Once in a while I get to travel across the country and listen to as many FMs as I possibly can. Of course there are many areas where FMs are broadcasting in local dialects I don’t understand. I don’t listen to those.  To my dismay, FMs are spewing out way too much rubish. Our children are in trouble.

The absolute lack local content – death by foreign influences

Whoever wrote the creed for our Ugandan FM stations must have failed to include a few clauses on local content. Most of our radio stations, local content means 2 minutes of news briefs and an overload of music - mostly foreign. They paint a picture of a country with no action, with nothing local to report, with no programmes to air. Are we a country that feeds off solely from E!, MTV, TRACE and the like? I acknowledge the need to rebroadcast  international news and programmes, but apart from sports 8again hugely foriegn) there is little to say in form of content beyond music.  I keep asking myself if there is any quality control managers for our local stations. We are being potrayed as too unimaginative having little to discuss on air. In short, we are being numbed by the music replays. We have CDs and MP3s for that sort of thing. What takes us to radios is a good mix of dialogue, digests, news, and measured entertainment. We don't listen in so that the broadcasters can kill us off with mind-numbing music and little else.

That said there are some good stations who strive to give listeners about 3-4 hours of real good quality programming every day. There stations that teach us about our culture, our history, our politics, our farming and how we can improve in the a few selected sectors. There is however so precious little of these good topics and those with the great digests broadcast them mostly in local dialects… How often do you get an hour’s audio broadcast on the following: Manufacturing, Justice, rights, constitutional affairs, Innovations, Employment, Tourism, Education, Health, Security, Trade, Gender, youth, child development? I bet you these topics are simply crammed into 2 minutes briefs every hour on the hour. And if you listen long enough you will realise these briefs are repeated every hour for 6 hours before someone realises they probably have overdone it.

Come on radio owners, managers, regulators, we need better. Music is not enough - its not everything. Entertainment news is not enough. Repeated news bulletins won’t cut it. Use your platforms productively. Use your creativity. Give us quality stories, indepth analyses, magazines, digests. Talk to us about new challenges, business, trade, innovations, and share new knowledge. Make your contribution to Uganda’s development.

The commercial FM – death by adverts

I don’t know about you but I think the FM radios are oversubscribed with adverts. You have up more than 5 adverts running almost every 10 minutes. You spice these up with DJ mentions which nowadays sound EXACTLY like the advert. Worse still, the advert is made just before or right after the DJ mention and you wonder why the repetition. Our ears are numbed with your ads. There cases where all you get between mucis interludes and adverts! Mor and more the presenters sound like robots being cued in and out. 

Here is what happens when  you start your lengthy ad session: I quickly go to next choice of FM, change to  CD/MP3 or swtich off until I feel the ads are done. Your ads are way too repeatitive.  I do that almost every morning, once the song is done and the presenters start their sing-song of a tirade of DJ mentions crammed in 2-5 minutes, I flip the switch.  We know you make money from the ads but that doesn’t mean you  sound too scripted that we are bored to death: here is a case in point: There is an ad about signing up for this job website /mobile app. Once it is done the presenter repeats it. I once heard 2 presenters on several day making the same mistake on air every day. They would say,"... whether you are a pony a bishop or a king" Now if you play a little bit of chase you know that there is no piece called a pony. They meant a Pawn! But since everything is scripted, 2 presenters on the same show for about a week called it a pony! Robots. If your client’s haven’t complained, I guess they are just as unimaginative.

For all of you scrambling for ad space in what has been segmented as prime time, I will repeat my words (pun intended): We simply skip to the next FM when your advert starts… unless that was your intention of course.

A digital world that has left you by – death by short-sightedness

Have you ever tried to tune in to the local FM stations online especially on your smart phone?  Yes, for some of the big Kampala FM stations you are able to find online streaming services. I can bet many people don't know this.

Here is feedback for the FM industry:

• It is excruciating to access the digital channels especially on phone. I guess the management thinks using mobile apps instead of full web version is a waste of time?
• Perhaps the owners of FM stations dont give a hoot whether you can hear their programmes in Kyoto, Kamuli, Kansas or Kaberamaido?
• Perhaps they are closed off in their thinking and are too busy trying to meet the needs to Kampala to imagine a future where they actually influence thoughts and development across nations.

The world is your audience, stop imagining that you are broadcasting to Kawempe Division only. We would like to listen to our favourite shows (they are so precious few of these) wherever we go, around the world. Expand your imagination, give us digital FM radio. We live in an age of ICT, big FM stations should not keep thinking you are an over grown Public Address (PA) system meant for a few kilometre radii of listenership.  We demand internet radio  that is easy to access.

 

The lack of PG ratings – death by the blips

I pity parents who take kids to school in the morning while listening to certain breakfast shows in Kampala. From the songs to the presenters’ chit-chat, most of what you hear should come with a PG caution. The stations (or whoever controls the content) have figured out that once a song has been cleaned out by blipping all the profanities, it is safe enough for everyone to enjoy. Now I don’t know about you, I quickly fill in the blips and reimagine the entire song. If I do it, I think many do it. And hence kids soon enough learn to fill in the blanks (sorry blips). Can we have radio with cleaner content or PG ratings on shows so that we know when our next generation can be allowed to tune in? Radios should be held responsible for the content they broadcast.

The politically overcharged – death by polarisation

Here is another case of lack of imagination. A couple of radios have figured that giving us a politician every evening (or some time of day) is the best way to keep us politically informed. The idea is great, the execution? May be not! There is lack of variety. You have the same politicians on the same radio every week. I start to think the politicians are in bed with the media. And they have created such a blurred line I can almost see it. You wonder whether there is any objectivity in the stories / interviews being spewed out.  It’s tiring imagining one station as government and the other as opposition. Most of your stations are registered as private business entities, why then do you seem so obviously being paid by one side or the other? It kills the very essence of journalism. In my very minimal analysis, there are 2 camps. The politically (over)charged and the (very) apolitical. In other words it’s all or nothing. There is no balance.  We want radios to be sources of quality information we can trust. But more and more we take everything they say with a sack of salt. Politics is killing the radio listenership real fast.

There is a lot is more out there than cheap politics of pro and opposition MPs usual mantra of mudslinging. Give us good political discussions / debates that actually build us. We quickly tire of those conspiracy theories that simply polarise the public without good solutions.

The repetitive hum-drum – death by monotony

• Some stations play the same songs over and over until you know the lines by heart. Thank you for filling our brains with songs guys. Great job people, nicely done!
• Some stations haven’t changed programming in 5 years. Thanks for being extremely predictable! We are very comfortable knowing what to expect every day.

• Some of the stations have the same presenters for the last decade… doing the same shows. That is simply great. We get so attached to your great voices, views and personalities that we keep thinking you are a member of our extended families.

In otherwords...

You need to evolve. Innovate, reimagine, and improve your game. Even with the same presenter or same show, we could do with better content, more creative presentations and more variety within the programmes and across the day. We could definitely do with some variety in music (especially for those who kill us with a song just because it is so popular on UK charts or some US billboard). How can a song be that popular that you play it 4 times a day?  You might imagine that it’s a good song and the artists but soon enough we move on. We hear the song and flip the switch.

We have great music from all over the world, not simply from a handful of countries. You have 24 hours, at your disposal, not just 4 hours. You have terabytes of music, not a few bytes. 

On our side we have a couple of local radio stations and thousands on the internet. We have social media, blogs, news sites, YouTube channels, sports channels, itunes, series channels, streaming movie channels, and tonnes of other distractions to keep us busy.

Keep us interested. Or else we shall move on! We are your clients. The promoters want us to buy their merchandise not run away due to overdose. The musicians want us to listen to and enjoy their songs not flip a switch due to overdose.