| PERFECT FACE FOR RADIO. After word got around, I was
offered various jobs which involved doing pretty much the same thing in
other parts of the country, and I opted for the ELFM project in
the Eastern Cape Province city of East London,
a river port city on the
Indian Ocean. This was an initiative by the Greater East London Tourist
Authority to set up the city's own private radio station, and I became
project head in late 1991 after setting up my own radio broadcasting
consultancy. which I'd operate for the next six years. |
 |
| ELFM AND POLITICS. After just over a year, the ELFM project became bogged down
by all the national political wrangling going on at the time, delaying
the crucial broadcast legislation we were depending on. This was
part of the process which the country underwent to pull itself out of
the apartheid era (remember that this was just after the all-white white
Nationalist Party government had unbanned the ANC, released Nelson
Mandela and was negotiating the country a new future). |
|
| RADIO ALGOA. Fortunately, the
SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) hired me as a presenter
for regional station RADIO ALGOA in
1992, and I was to spend a couple of very enjoyable years in this radio studio
overlooking the East London beachfront. |
 |
BRFM STEREO. (1993-95)
|
| BIGGER AND BETTER. I joined RADIO ALGOA's spin-off local
station BRFM in 1993, originally a 2 hours-a-day transmitter split from
the main regional service. In 1994, BRFM was opened as a fully-fledged
daytime station with its own staff and the works. I shifted to Breakfast
Shows and simultaneously become Station Music Programmer and even Acting Station Manager
for the
station until 1995. |
 |
|
BRFM'S STORY. In 1995, the Independent Broadcasting Authority ordered the SABC to
close BRFM, accusing them of exceeding the bounds of their original
broadcast licence for the region. Despite massive listener support for the
station, the powers-that-be switched the station off. The SABC shifted me
to afternoon drive on their province-wide service while my colleagues and
friends had to do other things. Like Naveen Singh (good RMR friend), who
joined East Coast Radio in Durban, and Fiona D, who went to P4 Radio in
Cape Town.
|
|
| ALGOA STEREO. The SABC then relocated me to their much bigger
regional station where I was given the weekday PM drivetime
show - which worked for me 'cause I didn't have to get up at 5.30 every
morning to do the breakfast show anymore. So I moved from East London to a bigger
market station in the city of Port Elizabeth in the middle of '95.
Things were coming along nicely until I made headlines in '96 in a much-publicised episode which involved me losing my temper with an
unruly crowd at a station function... The incident made the regional headlines for a week, and my face was on
the bloody front page - all this and I didn't even get the chance to rip
the heads off any live chickens. Sad. |
 |
