media update’s David Jenkin caught up with him to chat about the station’s successes.  

To what do you attribute Hot 91.9FM’s successes at this year’s Liberty Radio Awards?

Focus, passion, determination, consistency, and a team that believed and followed through on my vision for Hot 91.9FM from day one.

What was the energy in the studio like following the Awards, and how do you feel about it personally?

The energy at Hot 91.9FM is always electric and people feel the happy energy when they walk in, it’s what sets us apart from other stations. Since winning our ten Liberty Radio Awards it truly has humbled us in knowing that we make a positive difference each day in our community and being acknowledged for it by our fellow media professionals makes what we do each day that much more enjoyable. 

Our DNA is FUN and we live this each day, on and off air. The more fun we have, it amplifies through the frequency and makes our listeners feel good. 

Personally, I feel like a proud dad watching the growth of Hot 91.9FM each day, especially knowing how it all began from one simple idea to make a difference in our community through radio.

If you’d had a chance to say a few words on stage at the Awards, what would you have said?

We feel incredibly blessed to do what we do each day and make positive difference …. I dedicated the Station of the Year Award to Michaela Kirkinis from Hot 91.9FM who passed on earlier this year. Michaela was the first person I told about my idea for Hot 91.9FM. 

She inspired me, was my constant source of motivation and helped me physically build the station. No task was beneath her. She would have been really proud of us, and been at our table, but we know she was with us in spirit.

Are there advantages to being a community radio station?

The advantages, in our view, is, we are a non-profit company and get to give back to our community. We are not required to pay any shareholders dividends, so our revenue makes a meaningful impact. We went back to the core reasons of why we love radio and by doing this, the passion came back and we started doing the best radio of our broadcast careers. We don’t do radio any longer for the numbers, profit margins, or to make shareholders happy, we do it because it’s FUN and everything else follows and that’s part of the winning formula.

Broadly, what would you say community radio adds to South Africa’s media landscape? 

Community radio has come a long way. The perception created of community radio was poor in the past, with understandable reasoning. Over the past few years, it has evolved in a sector showing growth within the community category in both ratings and revenue.

Many community stations are professional, targeted, well-researched, they understand their audience at a granular level, have incredible talent, world-class production and deliver great content that is tailor-made to their audience delivering higher TSL (time spent listening).

No listener wakes up in the morning and says, “It’s Tuesday so I think I’ll listen to a community station today because I listened to a commercial station yesterday” – most listeners don’t know and don’t care about the difference between commercial and community stations. They will simply pick the best station that speaks to them. 

In the same way advertisers will place their spend on a station that is targeted and delivers ROI. Commercial or community is insignificant.

What’s next for Hot 91.9FM?

We will continue delivering a world-class standard of radio that listeners and advertisers deserve. We are working with ICASA to increase our signal strength but, in the meantime, we focus on growth within digital platforms to get to audiences outside of our footprint. But, most importantly, continue to give back and have FUN!

For more information, visit www.hot919fm.com.

Interested in reading more about the Liberty Radio Awards? See our coverage of the event in our article Liberty celebrates the radio stars at 2017 Liberty Radio Awards.