Local Radio Stations in Africa: Sustainability or Pragmatic Viability?

"Despite the explosion of digital news outlets globally, millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa continue to rely on radio as the most accessible independent news source."

Radio stations across Africa are facing unprecedented threats to their sustainability due to weak media markets, limited advertising revenue, and intense competition. Published by the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), this report explores the challenging environment within which local radio stations survive and highlights the strategies of 8 radio stations in Uganda and Zambia that have been able to persevere without finding themselves beholden to either local politicians or international donor funding. The approaches they have taken toward sustainability offer insights for both struggling radio stations and the media donors and media assistance community who are supporting them.

The research is based on a review of current literature and an action-oriented study of mainly rural-based proximity radio stations, 4 each from Uganda and Zambia. They all represent local or "proximity" stations with a public service mission. The term "proximity radio" (borrowed from the French "radio de proximité") is seen to encompass all types of community, local, and/or vernacular radio stations, profit or nonprofit, and are set up to serve a particular area and/or language group.

The 8 case studies in this report include both community and commercial stations, but all have a public service remit. This means that "their broadcasting sets out to improve people's lives, be it through independent and/or local news, educational programs, public service announcements, social and behavior change messaging, or participatory program-making, offering a voice for the poor, marginalized, and disempowered." All are self-sustaining, with the exception of one donor-dependent outlet for contrast.

The document offers a description of each of the 8 radio stations including information about their reach and a breakdown of their funding sources. Overall, the report points out that almost all proximity radios in the study face challenges of staff quality, high turnover, difficulties attracting advertising and sponsorship, and difficulties paying their personnel. All 8 radio stations also struggle to make a profit, and only 3 can pay all of their journalists and presenters a regular wage and do not have to rely on volunteers.

To survive, the research found that proximity radio stations employ a wide range of strategies, which the researchers grouped into 3 general approaches:

1. Fostering an enabling environment
The research showed that navigating national and local politics is an essential strategy for a radio station's survival. There are 2 reasons for this: the government's ability to close operations, and the government and politicians as a vital source of revenue. There are therefore constant and inevitable trade-offs between courting politicians on the one hand and maintaining editorial integrity on the other.

In addition, donors played a role in the finances of all the case study stations to some degree, although, here also, trade-offs exist, as there is always the danger of surrendering content control to the donor.

2. Harnessing viable funding modalities
All the station managers and owners in the study were interested in finding advertising revenue from commercial companies, though some more than others. In the drive for advertising revenue, the study showed that case study stations had the following in common:

• The majority of advertising revenue comes from the capital city, not the station's immediate locality.
• Government departments running public awareness campaigns make up a large proportion of the advertisers, especially for proximity radio.
• Having at least one, if not several, marketers on staff helps generate income.
• Each station has creative and diverse ways of featuring advertising and sponsorship.
• All radio stations have difficulties getting advertisers to pay on time, and some even employ debt collectors.
• Stations are often forced to abandon their standard prices for spots, messages, and sponsorship because of competition from other media.

Other funding modalities explored by the case study stations include: market research to demonstrate reach to advertisers; syndicated advertising revenue, where radio stations work together to bargain collectively; and paid community announcements such as song requests and announcements for births, marriages, or deaths. Some also relied on talk shows where guests paid to appear, and in a worst-case scenario, proximity stations also frequently relied on an individual or an organisation to bail them out.

3. Capitalising on management and operations to expand reach
For all the case study stations, keeping and expanding the audience was recognised as a vital and ongoing task, both for their mission and for their longevity. "If you're popular, you are beating the competition, and if you have a large reach, your airtime has more monetary value." The report discusses a number of management and operations strategies that are being used to maintain viability. These include: investing in staff training in marketing and business management, relying on volunteers despite the fact that this can undermine the professionalism and appeal of the station, owning the premises, increasing audience numbers by owning powerful transmitters and building up loyal audiences through longevity, maintaining integrity and reputation, knowing audiences and responding to their needs, and having an online presence.

While the case studies vary in many ways, 2 key lessons can be extracted. The first is the need to deploy a range of survival strategies. The "case study stations show a variety of survival strategies and it is not guaranteed that deploying them will result in long-term viability - but it is a necessary start." Secondly, retaining a close sense of community but at the same time building a large audience was shown to be important across all stations. "Radio stations must do all they can to expand their audience and tap into the national advertising market while remaining close to their community."

In terms of what this means for the media assistance community, the report makes 3 points:

• The media assistance community should accept the "good" instead of the "perfect" for the sake of expediency, and opt for pragmatic viability instead of sustainability. As the case studies demonstrate, these community radio stations manage to function under overwhelming commercial and political pressures, which means that quality may be compromised. "It should be celebrated that proximity radio stations are able to survive at all, made possible by journalists who remain committed despite enormous constraints."
• There is a role for support and advice on paid-for content. The programmes and talk shows that are paid for by politicians and sponsors need to be differentiated from content that is editorially free. Stations need advice and support to be able to make this distinction clear to their listeners.
• Donor partnerships and grant-funding do not necessarily allow a radio station to better serve the public interest and to stay above politics. On the contrary, "donor funding can put proximity radios in a position of continuous donor-chasing, always cutting corners to save money and dependent on volunteers." This can lead to stations losing their audiences, which is detrimental to the survival of any radio station.