krizo, i really appreciated this contribution in the whatsApp group especially when you hint on digital and ICT in today’s broadcast media!
True about short episodes or crispy. And a good farmer programme should be like 13 minutes or 20 minutes but not beyond 30 minutes. Anyway, we were just told this by our local trainers in Uganda.
My radio station (OTEC FM - www.otecfmghana.com) is located in Kumasi, in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The city is the second largest and most populated after Accra, the capital of Ghana.
The training is done at the premises of my radio station. The first stage is the classroom discussion and the second is the field practicals.
Below are pictures of the rabbit and mushroom set ups we have at our premises:
I attribute the high patronage to the fact that OTEC FM was the first private-owned radio station in the region thus have “loyal listeners” who are either farmers or engage in farming activities in one way or the other.
This discussion is very interesting. Let me add my own contribution to what others have already said.
What sources of revenue does your farmer program currently rely on?
Mainly:
Advertising
Partnership – worked with some organisations who deal in agricultural matters.
Are there other ways you think you can generate revenue for your farmer program? Please explain.
First and foremost I would like to state here that it is important for our radio stations to sell the program rather than the station itself. The community is not interested in a station per se, but is keen to listen to programs that interest them.
Sponsorship Package – Rather than depending on one sponsor to support our programme it is important to break the amount of say a 60 minutes programme to be supported by three sponsors. But off course they should be given options of either sponsoring alone or with us but it is important to explain to them what they stand to gain.
We tried this and it worked very well. We had targeted five sponsors for the programme. We approached eight organisations and three came on board for the first six months while two joined in the second half of the year to make five. However, the number reduced in the second year to four. We had these four for the next two years.
Community contributions: Off course this should be followed up with the station being visible in the community. Sometime we were doing a survey for our programme at a focus group discussion and asking people if they could support it to continue being on air, they answered in the affirmative that they can provided that the radio station also helps them to better their lives through information dissemination. They suggested that they could be contributing in their small way like bags of maize, goats, chickens among others which they station could later sell.
Membership: Listeners could be also be asked to be members of the radio station. This could be coupled by giving them reason to be members. So incentives for being a member should be publicised.
What challenges do you face trying to generate revenue?
The marketing that we do for radios are of the same type, usually focused on how to sell airtime to advertisers, and sometimes, how to produce good advertisements. Most marketing we do is a traditional ‘textbook’ type, which is not very relevant to us as our marketing should be based more on communications with stakeholders, and relationships.
Sometimes we focus a lot of energy on advertising which is obviously part of marketing, but advertising doesn’t always result in sales. This has been the case most of the times.
MamaFm (Catherine),
May be look at and read through the resources that Denis and Busi sent about this same question you are asking. There are guides to the resources in Week 2. When i also read through, they answered my questions connected to yours. But you are right, may be Denis and Busi gets back to say more about a small radio with small audience and how it can compete as compared to a radio that is big.
But in the resources that am telling you about, it is that- whether small or big, both radios can sustain themselves so long as they are designed with good content that suits the target audience, that involves the audience/farmers and make the audience part of the station., May be try go back to Week 2 and locate those resources that Denis and Busi sent in connection to this issue.
@MartinMwape Thank you for responding to my post, I encourage you to try out that type of system commonly known as segmenting of programs where you sell what interests a client. Package the program in such a way that the 5 minutes, 10 minutes or so slots are sell able. In fact they at times fetch more money than selling a bulk/whole program of 30 minutes.
Regarding the farming app, which @MartinMwape commented on after @wengo’s post, I know of a radio station which uses a tactic of formation of Listeners Clubs to generate revenue. How? They keep reminding the Listeners how the radio belongs to them, that it is theirs, how it needs funds to run it and how much is needed and that way they entice the farmers/listeners to make monthly contribution towards the running/operations of their radio.
This way, Listeners have committed themselves to send money through their phones to the station… They use mobile money system where they send money to an automated electronic receipting machine /system which on receiving cash, it releases a message giving details of who the sender is and how much has been sent; it sends a “thank you” message back to the sender, immediately with information of the name of sender as well as the amount received. This transparency has helped the station to attract even more donors/contributors who donate with one heart. At the end of every month, the station gives a financial report of how much money has been received from the listeners and other companies and how it has been spent; the balance or deficit is equally announced. Immediately after that, more donations come in.
In return the listeners expect exciting and benefiting programs and are promise even better programs.
The other way, is by going to the people and allowing them to do the program themselves of course with a presenter’s guidance, it can be a discussion, a fete or a play. In Uganda, airtime of Uganda Shillings 20,000 (ie about 5.4 US dollars) you get a ‘bundle’ of 500 minutes Airtime, 500 MBS, and 500 sms (Short messages), this is for a whole month. If you load this airtime on you mobile phone and use it as a means of calling the studio and everybody uses the phone to say whatever they want to air out or to communicate, it can be a group discussion, a Farmers’ Expo, a fundraising drive, a Church service, an Islamic Juma prayer and sermon, a school sports or Open Day, a drama/play, or just greeting their colleagues. This will be a live broadcast where the organizers will pay for airtime of an hour or more and during this time other people will be contributing money to go on air because it is exciting to be heard on radio.For you you will be generating revenue! It is a simple mechanism for getting money though very risky because some of the people could be rowdy and they could make blasphemes or slanderous utterances or statements before you get the phone from them the “words” would have gone! It is the community that invites the radio to go to it.
We have an app like msoko where producers can enter into partnership with the developers. This purely offers prices for different commodities. I think another way is for voice call messages. Farmers can call for specific information. Most farmers have upgraded their phones and this makes it easy to access information.
I have liked this @obolo, because an African’s believing is in the eyes - when you see something you understand it better. You explained in your post how farmers are trained in rabbit keeping and mushroom growing and how these are displayed at your radio station premises; I did not quiet get a clear picture of how it looks like but now I have seen it and have even learnt how the cages for rabbits look like and on a serious note I will print the photos out and have them made so that I can also start rearing rabbits… We did it some years back in my women’s group and that is when I tested rabbit meat! Whooou! It tastes like chicken! You have made me think of doing it again plus the mushrooms… Kudos!
Hello @Busi_Ngcebetsha, thank you for your response to my post. I would like to inform you that the 200 radios are scattered even though in every town or village in Uganda we have a radio of some sort. It could be a community or a religious one.
In Kampala city and its suburbs, there are about 25 or so, these have completely exhausted all frequencies on the meter band from 87.5 FM to 108 FM with a radio station after every .5 of a frequency like 87.5 FM, 88.2 FM, 88.5 FM, 88.8 FM, 89.2 FM, 90.0 FM and so on …until the end of the meter Band - 108 FM. The Licensing body gives licenses to radio operators as they until they had no more to sell. They sent people to neighboring towns and villages and they bought more frequencies. Today if you came with your million US Dollars, for a frequency in Kampala, you would go back with it. That is why the audience in Kampala area especially is very slippery. They have many options and advertisers have to do a lot of research before they entrust their adverts with a radio station though there are some obvious ones which have a big audience.
Uploading… What sources of revenue does your farmer program currently rely on?
As earlier indicated in my last week submission, CBS FM radio station runs a series of “agricultural programs” ranging for farming practices to poultry and fishing activities. Most farmers programs concentrate of Coffee farmers, Banana and Sweet potatoes (The yellow sweet potatoes). Fish farming is a craze in Uganda today since the technology is now readily available, and the poultry section also has many companies providing hatchery services coming on board. As each section does push its mandate and what is new in the activity, we have numerous agro chemical suppliers, the coffee development association promoting good coffee arming practices, companies like Uga Chick that promotes poultry and fish farming, are all on board. These are majorly private commercial entities that usually sign for 2 quarters
Any ways to generate revenue
This may be a little challenging due to the objectives of the station but numerous avenues may include the diversification of as many farm service providers in the program as possible. A section of farmers concentrating on Rabbit multiplication are on the rise in Uganda. Encouraging such a group to join the farming discussion could boost your revenue stand.
During the coming Easter holiday celebrations 2018, CBS will host an expo that includes small and middle scale industries and these include those providing agricultural equipment and inputs. This is also another content and revenue boost to the program.
Encouraging farmers to form farm program listening groups as a basis for organization and enhancing the creation of a value audience that the station could sell to future advertisers. Many farmers have joined cooperative movements in their regions to ensure a centralized service delivery system and an easy approach to attracting sponsorship and partnerships.
Challenges faced.
The competition in the industry is stiff. CBS covers a big section of Central and southern Uganda and most of these localities have established their own radio stations.
Appropriate time allocation due to the tight programming schedule at the station. Programmers at times have a challenge to schedule programs or even shifting to a different time zone that might not be that favorable to the farmers.
Farmer’s program feed back is not readily received due to the adoption of new technologies, which might not ogre well with farmers.
Most sponsors/advertisers prefer to come with their own program host and facilitators. They want some one who will effectively present their mandate in the time paid for and subsequently allotted.
Yes rehema, it is true and they are even more than 25 radios in Kampala city alone.
Ohoooo good, very impressed with this creativity
What sources of revenue does your farmer program currently rely on?
Currently, our radio station rely on the general internally generated fund and one major sponsor that is my fashion and designing center.
MamaFm (Catherine) i have also just fully read the resources by Blythe on this question of that you are raising. i see it answers part of the issue that you are raising. Also the resources by Denis and Busi about the question you are raising here do answer it.
Sarah.
So is this a source of revenue for your radio station…rather farmer programme?
I think I like this. It is another way of generating revenue. I like the fact that it was the listeners club that took initiative. Indeed community radio belongs to the community.
There is one radio station here in South Africa that started broadcasting from a container usimg egg shells as sound proof. The radio station was very popular and positioned where the community can easily access. Listeners would pop in for shout outs when it is time, there was no need for them to send text messages or even call. Only those who were far from the station used phones for this. The radio station also relied on listeners’ contributions. There was a small monthly membership fee they paid to be members of the radio station. Everyone wanted to be part of the radio station. Today the radio station broadcasts from a beautiful building that they got from the municipality and has first class equipment. They are one of the hub stations in the country. Each province has a hub station - this is a central point for other stations in the province where government adverts and sponsorships are centralised. Stations who agree to be part of the hub benefit from the funding opportunities channelled through the hub, and each hub station has a production studio that any member of the hub can use if they need to produce programs and are unable to from their own stations.
The radio station was treated as a business from the beginning. Volunteers would clock in and out of work even before they became full time employees that now receive a salary. Volunteers were encouraged to market their programs and get sponsorship and in return they would receive a certain percentage from whatever revenue they brought in.
Great initiative that other radios like my radio can engage in. Thanks for sharing.
It has become an alternative source of revenue aside the regular advertisement on the farmer program.
Seen already the resources and I am reading them and got good responses from colleagues here. Thanks.
Great obolo!
Please share more, how much does this initiative of mushroom growing and rearing of rabbits fetch for your station say… in a month? Do you grow throughout the year or it is seasonal…like these mushrooms? Who attends to this farm? How do you manage the revenue that comes from the farm? And do you put a %age of the proceeds from the farm to the Farmer programme/s?
Thank you.
Sarah Mawerere (smawerere).