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ABSTRACT
Local radio stations have mushroomed in Africa, including Tanzania, partly due to increased support from international donors. However, research results show that the lack of economic viability is a major constraint for local radio stations. They can hardly generate sufficient revenues from advertisers to sustain the station. This leads to high turnover of staff due to low pay, low quality of content, and lack of capacity in serious programming. Based on a market model, the goal of this paper is to identify these problems from both a business and a journalism perspective and to find possible solutions. The results of this analysis show that a viable economic model in Africa requires simultaneous support for three different fields, (a) development of good content (b) development of media management capacities, and (c) media research covering the extent and satisfaction of local audiences in order to develop local advertising markets that serve local media.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Those were held in December 2013 with COMNETA Chairperson Joseph Sekiku and four representatives from community radio stations (Radio Orkonerei/Fadeco/Boma Hai/Kyela FM)
2. We use the term “local radio stations” in order to avoid the complexity of the term “community radio station”. The definition of community radio stations by UNESCO “for, by and about the community …” doesn’t reflect the reality in Tanzania. As Anderson (Citation2008, p. 5) rightly said: “There is a wide variety of community media from the extremely effective … and those which are community more in the name than in operation” (see Spurk and Shashi (Citation2014, p. 5) for further elaboration).
3. Although they work a lot as correspondents, like 3–6 h per day (for collecting news).
4. The study was done by Ipsos – Synovate, a media research company who also conducts annually the “Tanzania All Media and Products Survey” (TAMPS) which is not publicly available for free. TMF Tanzania Media Fund (Citation2013) quotes some data from TAMPS 2012 but doesn’t say in detail whether and how audience data differ or not.
5. In rural areas, TBC Taifa (70%) and Radio Free Africa (67%) have the highest regular listenership (at least once a week), followed by TBC FM (43%), Radio 1 (39%) and Clouds FM (20%) (Table 3.5, p. 21). In urban areas, the percentage of TBC Taifa and Radio Free Africa is less (52% and 49%, respectively) and the percentage of Radio 1 (49%) and Clouds FM (39%) is much higher. TMF Tanzania Media Fund (Citation2013) mentions that their results are mostly in line with TAMPS 2012, although the latter has identified Radio Free Africa much more as a leader (12.3 Mio. listeners nation wide, out of 20 Mio. potential listeners population) compared with TBC Taifa and TBC FM (8.9 Mio.), Clouds FM (6.9 Mio.) and Radio One (5.6 Mio. listeners).
6. This has to be interpreted with caution as the limited overall number of the survey (N = 2000) leads to very limited numbers in districts, so that the district profile is often based on less than 100 radio listeners for the entire district.
7. For example, Chechem FM in Rukwa (29%), Bomba FM (32%), Mbeya FM and Mbeya Highland FM (17%) in Mbeya, Radio Kwizera (97%) in Kigoma, Nuru FM and Zenj FM (36%) in Zanzibar, Sauti ya Injili (18%) in Arusha, Fadeco (45%) in Kagera, Ebony FM (64%) in Iringa, Ukweli (30%) in Morogoro.
8. These radios are: FADECO (Karagwe), Sengerema (Sengerema), Orkonerei (Simanjiro), Pangani (Tanga), Kahama (Shinyanga), Micheweni (Pemba), Mtegani (Zanzibar), Pambazuko (Ifakara) and Kyela (Mbeya).
9. There are only few exceptions, in Pambazuka and in Kahama only 13% and 16%, respectively, have access to more than four.
10. Radio stations apparently don’t have access to the annual Tanzania All Media and Products Survey (TAMPS).
11. This criterion refers only to pieces where individuals or organisations were explicitly accused of wrongdoing.
12. Personal communication with Margaret Masbayi, 11 January 2014
13. Personal communication with Margaret Masbayi, 11 January 2014. Masbayi has worked in Uganda for the ILO project in 2006, and in 2014 in Tanzania in a different radio project.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Christoph Spurk
Christoph Spurk is a lecturer and media researcher at the Institute of Applied Media Studies at Zurich University of Applied Sciences. He mainly conducts research on quality of journalism and communication in Africa and on the influence of mass media on the democratisation process. He is working in advancing the methods of evaluation in media support, measuring results in communication efforts and mass media programmes, and supporting media development organisations in monitoring and evaluation. He has done research for and worked, for example, with Deutsche Welle Academy, Swiss Development Cooperation, Fondation Hirondelle, UNESCO, and many African universities. Recently, he started to apply multi-method research approaches in efforts to measure media’s impact in fragile contexts.
Filip Dingerkus
Filip Dingerkus works as Research Assistant at the Institute of Applied Media Studies (IAM) at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur (ZHAW) and is a German editor for the European Journalism Observatory (EJO). He studied Media and Communication at the Institute of Mass Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich from 2008 to 2014 and graduated in January 2014 with a Master’s degree in Social Sciences. His professional interests include journalism research and international comparative media research.