Muzenda headlines SA radio and digital sound broadcasting indaba
STAFF WRITER
Vongai Muzenda, the group managing director of AB Communications, is next week scheduled to headline the Radio and Digital Sound Broadcasting summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The summit, which is scheduled for June 18–19,2024, will run under the theme “Radio and digital sound-using technology to deliver content listeners want.”
Speaking to Broadcast Media Africa, she gave her thoughts on the future of radio and digital sound broadcasting in Africa.
“…with each passing year, more people around the world are spending more of their time, attention, and money on the complex and increasingly immersive entertainment and media experiences that are available to them both on radio and digital platforms,” Muzenda said.
She added: “This fosters the need for collaboration and meeting with like-minded colleagues to strategise on meeting our audience’s needs and explore interactive solutions that sustainably increase revenue, market reach and profit by tapping into innovations that expand our customer bases.”
Additionally, Muzenda emphasised that players “need to understand artificial intelligence tools to integrate into our media plans, and ChatGPT and image generators like Dall—E and Midjourney are good places to start.
“Multimedia content that follows our audiences has become critical as our audiences are scattered across platforms, and their attention spans are getting shorter.
“Audiences prefer to consume media products in digital formats, and media houses have had to introduce mobile news, social media updates, online newspapers, Facebook live broadcasting and Twitter news bites. Hence, they interact with their listeners and viewers at every touch point.
“Practitioners can expect to discuss common issues affecting broadcasters and get insights on how to remain relevant, retain current audiences, and attract new demographics through innovative and relevant content.”
Muzenda stated that financial obstacles stood in the way of the effective deployment of digital radio and sound broadcasting services throughout Africa.
“Funding for digitalisation infrastructure is a major challenge in Africa. This is because the equipment is expensive to procure and install.
“This has seriously affected the implementation of digital and sound broadcasting. Internet usage and penetration are low. Statisca.com puts the average internet penetration rate for Africa at 43%, and most of the African population does not have access to the internet, as indicated. This is mainly due to limited or lack of infrastructure, which has hampered the implementation of digital radio and sound broadcasting in many African countries.
“The cost of data is prohibitive for the average Africans with internet access. A report by the Media Institute of Southern Africa in 2022 indicated that 1 gigabyte of data in Botswana costs an average of US$15.55, and Namibia was US$10.52 for the same. Zimbabwe was, on average, US$5. Given that most African countries are fighting poverty, such costs are
prohibitively high to implement digital radio and sound broadcasting.”
She said the industry stands to benefit from the summit in a number of ways including how to implement AI for newsrooms, profit-sharing models with big tech companies, dealing with misinformation and disinformation and funding agencies for media.
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