Industry dynamics and social change

Industry' transformation and changes in society were cited as justification for including English language audio clips in Phalaphala FM news bulletins. It was reasoned that the broadcasting industry' in South Africa and globally was changing, and that competition for an increasingly fragmented listenership was intensifying by the day; the audience was getting more youthful, hence the need to dance to the tune of the audience. 01 and J1 stressed the fact that radio broadcasting was about the numbers, and Phalaphala FM was under pressure to appeal to a youthful audience for survival; flexibility in use of language was one of the strategies of attracting the youth. Below is the conversation between the researcher and Q_1 regarding the changing nature of the broadcasting industry and the pressure exerted by competitors:

Ol: I think our target audience is changing, evolving, that is the main thing, the reason why, yeah. Apart from the resources, the scarcity of resources, the changes that are happening, yeah, are impacting so much on our broadcast, and we feel like, sometimes we feel like, the pressure to please our audience, the growing audience. Because broadcasting is about the numbers. We also value the numbers.

TC: So, it’s about the numbers?

Ol: Umm ... it’s about the numbers, how many people are following you. And it would be, like, useless also if we speak through Tshivenda - it’s not educating, it’s not entertaining, it’s not informing, like, the larger part of our audience.

TC: What about the issue of competition?

01: There is also competition, it also influences, like, on social media, like I said, it’s a competition. We are, when we compare ourselves with our sister stations, we are far behind, we are lagging behind and we should do everything possible to catch up, to be visible on social media, to go and follow those audiences.

The above conversation illustrates the extent to which the warped assumption that African languages cannot be used to communicate effectively is embedded in Phalaphala FM’s programming. Assumptions that indigenous languages do not lend themselves to being used in technological spaces run against the grain of time-tested arguments that ‘communication is better enhanced in a medium that expresses the totality of the culture of a given people’ (Salawu 2006, 88). It is through such notions that dominant cultures perpetuate and propagate their superiority in public discourses and the media (Fiske 1990). This hegemony is further illustrated in the fact that the youthful presenters at Phalaphala FM enjoy mixing Tshivenda and English, particularly during morning and afternoon drive times, supposedly because, in the words of 01, ‘they feel like when you are speaking in English, you are Funky, you are connecting to your audience, younger, to your peers in fact’. This shows the extent to which the hegemony of the English language is entrenched at Phalaphala FM.

JI concurs with Ol with regards to the pressure from competitors and the evolving nature of the audience, which compels African language broadcasters, such as Phalaphala FM, to adopt or mix English with African languages in their broadcasts, to lure the youth who are increasingly being alienated from their mother languages. Societal change underwritten by new technologies and education means that the marketing efforts of broadcasting stations are more inclined to attract the youth, who now constitute the majority. JI had this to say:

Radio, mind you, the most important thing about radio is listenership. Isn’t it? If you get high listenership, that is, when they say, you are working, you are working very hard. So how many grannies are there? You check the population, people who are in large numbers are the youth. You understand? So, when you satisfy, you gratify the youth who are in large number, you don’t care much about these grannies, who make a very small population. Because we need listenership. So, these young ones, if you use the language, the way it is, if you use the idiomatic expressions of Venda, some will never understand what you are saying because most of them were educated at those English schools. So, they don’t even understand Venda. As long as radio strives for higher listenership .... If I am the manager, definitely, because I need listenership. If high listenership is there, where we will also use English, I will go there because my supervisor says you are working hard because you have got high listenership.

With regards to change, it is instructive to note that this change is affecting not just the youth as a demographic group, but also society at large as Tshivenda-speaking people. This, and the whole of South Africa, are being integrated into the global village through globalisation; broadcasters cannot resist the tide of globalisation. This notion came to light through 01 ’s statement that:

I don’t think it is necessarily a problem because, as a VhaVenda nation, we are also growing, you know, because things are changing, technology is changing, things are changing, we are also borrowing some words from English, and yeah.

This statement implies that adopting English was part and parcel of a process of change that was unfolding, and resisting this change would be a futile exercise. What is problematic, however, is that this change seems to be facilitated by, or revolves around, the use of English and not indigenous African languages such as Tshivenda.

Statements by O1 and JI lay bare the most lethal forces conspiring against the promotion of African languages as media of broadcasting. The market imperatives, compounded by demographic factors, and the emergence of new technologies are buttressing linguistic imperialism in broadcasting. Such hegemony is abated by the fallacious notion that indigenous African languages are ineffective in communicating certain issues.