TEBlog

Any talk radio listeners (567MW) out there? I'm currently conducting research into talk radio, democracy and the public sphere, and would appreciate your assistance with completing (and circulating) a listener questionnaire. Please email me if you'd like to receive the questionnaire, or post your comments.

Read more about talk radio below.

Primarily a phenomenon of post-Apartheid South Africa, talk radio offers a mediated interpersonal communication experience for its audience, providing listeners with a sense of personal contact and a forum to discuss and to learn about societal issues (Rubin & Step, 19xx). Despite its popular and often controversial nature, there is little academic literature on talk radio. Furthermore, while there are several descriptive audience studies based in the United States, no literature on South African talk radio was found.

While there are many hybrid formats, for the purposes of this article, talk radio is defined as “a format characterised by conversation that is initiated by a programme host and usually involving listeners who telephone to participate in the discussion about topics such as politics, sports, or current events” (Rubin & Step). As compared with face-to-face or telephone conversations, talk radio is public, available to a mass audience and amenable to interpersonal processes. In other words, while there were always large percentages (usually around 60%) of talk or non-music programming on the public broadcaster (SAFM), and there are talk segments on music format stations focusing primarily on popular culture, this article focuses on stations exclusively devoted to talk. In South Africa, there are two such stations: Radio 702 based in Johannesburg, and its sister station, 567 Cape Talk, based in Cape Town, both broadcasting on AM.

Talk radio is a powerful medium. The mass media help media consumers to frame reality (Gitlin, 1980), especially when it displays high levels of social presence. Perse and Coutright (1993) showed that audio channels were second to interpersonal channels in their degree of social presence, with the perceived distance between radio listeners and their programmes much closer than for other media. In other words, talk radio provides an accessible and conducive alternative to interpersonal interaction, especially for those listeners who find face-to-face interaction less rewarding (Armstrong & Rubin, 1989).