fortune in real estate, nightclubs, agriculture, and poultry.18 He told me that he was a specialist in “entertainment for the masses,” and he saw radio as strongly articulated to his clubbing business.19 However, whereas Pike, Quarcoo, and Katto hired DJs and broadcast European and US music, Simba’s managers had a more local anchorage. They hired comedians and humorists from the dense Kampala Luganda-speaking theater scene. Again, the radio landscape was moving away from journalism, its sociability circles, and its intellectual traditions. The year 1996 also saw the creation of CBS, the radio of the Kingdom of Buganda, as well as Voice of Toro, located in Fort Portal in Western Uganda, which was the first private radio station to be based up-country. Before that, all private stations were broadcasting in a 150-kilometer radius around the capital city. Apart from CBS, whose founders had a more immediate political objective in mind (see chapter 4), these new radio stations were also launched with strictly business objectives. The programs were focused on music and entertainment.
The Difficult Politicization of the Airwaves
In 2000, the private newspaper the Monitor launched its own radio station, Monitor FM. This was the first important investment in broadcast media by intellectuals and professional journalists. The programs were very different from the other stations’, as they were largely dominated by political debate: according to one of its journalists, “We had that Monitor content: ‘seriousness, seriousness.’ [. . .] Our format was radio talk format, from morning to evening: talk, talk, talk.”20 Economically it would prove to be a disastrous operation: after a few months, the station had to be relaunched due to bad audience figures. For most media workers, the failure of Monitor FM clearly demonstrated that if they wanted to talk politics on-air, they would have to respect certain conventions in order to be sustainable. As one said, “The failure of Monitor FM to pick up at the start killed all our hopes that professionals [journalists] can run an FM station better. [. . .] Radio made more money playing music and cracking jokes, something DJs did better.”21
This experience raises the question of how many people actually listen to political radio talk shows. Audience research carried out by private companies commissioned by the stations does not give exact figures, only tendencies. However, they clearly show that politics is not what attracts the most listeners.22 Today, as in the 2000s, most stations mainly broadcast entertainment and music, with only a couple of hours a day dedicated to politics. When looking at national figures (mixing Kampala and the rest of the country), evening political shows have very low audiences, except for CBS’s program Kiriza oba gana (Take it or leave it, in Luganda), long hosted by Meddie Nsereko (see chapter 4). However, even in the case of CBS, audience figures always rose after the programs finished. Regarding weekends, even if these shows were not the most popular, there were rises in audience levels for CBS and Radio Simba for their ebimeeza (both in Luganda). But this was not the case for Radio One’s English-speaking Ekimeeza. Figures restricted to Kampala gave a different picture. English-speaking evening shows saw a slight rise, illustrating how they attracted mainly an urban audience. For Kampala only, Radio One’s Ekimeeza was more visible, although it was far from being the most popular show on the station in terms of quantitative listenership. In all cases, according to the available audience research, the radio stations scored their best audience figures with morning entertainment shows and music.
The decision to program political talk shows was not based on the belief that they would attract many listeners. Their existence depended on how much particular people within the station were keen on making them a brand product, and how much influence these people had on management decisions. Indeed, establishing repertoires of political critique in the media depended not only on negotiation between journalists and the authorities, but also on internal dynamics within the radio stations. Some radio owners were hostile to programming “politics,” not necessarily because this might have created conflicts with the state, but because it was not financially attractive.23
Many were indeed reluctant to program political talk shows.24 On Radio Sanyu, journalists from the newsroom were quite frustrated with this situation: “Most of the time, it was music. [. . .] And he [Katto, the owner] was so strict. He wanted the news [to be] no more than 5 minutes. . . . Usually we used to fight. . . . Whenever you could go like eight minutes, you could see the man come [into the studio].”25 As Radio Simba’s owner told me,
[People] were interested in a bit of politics, talk shows, but one of the things we realized was that there was no fun on radio. Radio was very dull. All the radios sounded like errr . . . RFI . . . boring . . . BC. . . . Everybody believed that was what radio was supposed to be, very serious, and very unexciting and you know, nothing, no fun in radio. We decided we’re gonna be fun, lighthearted. [. . .] We set up a lot of entertainment programs, we got lots of funny guys, entertainment people, comedians on board, people who had been in drama, in theater, and we trained them on how to come on radio. [. . .] We had [only] two people from Mass Communication [department at Makerere University], and only one has remained here.26
At Capital FM, Pike started by hiring employees from the state broadcaster Radio Uganda; however, according to him, “It was very bad actually. After about three weeks we had to sack most of them. They sounded dull.”27 He got in touch with Peter Sematimba,28 who since then has become a celebrity, artistically and politically, and one of the most well-paid DJs in the country: “He was very lively, very American. You know he’s a Muganda who’s been living in Los Angeles, so he came and gave a very lively sound. Then . . . [we also hired] a famous club DJ. [. . .] So basically we switched to club people.”29 Soon, being a radio presenter became something glamorous, fashionable, and well-paid. The sociology of radio presenters was thus very different to that of print journalists.
Talk shows had to be infused with entertainment and accommodated a double heritage, depending on the station. In 1995, Capital FM launched Capital Gang, taking the same name as another show from CNN.30 In Uganda, as in the United States, every Saturday Capital Gang gathered a panel nicknamed “the Gang” or “the Gangsters,” composed of famous or rising members of the political intelligentsia, as well as journalists, to comment on the weekly news. The tone was openly lighthearted, as in a discussion among friends. Similarly, the Andrew Mwenda Live show on KFM was conceptualized in 2000 by Oliver Murray, a Canadian journalist, based on a North American model: it was largely centered on the personality of the host.31
On Radio Simba, the People’s Court was inspired by a UK program, but also reflected its producers’ training and experience in local drama. There was already a vibrant tradition of social and political theater in Uganda that had arisen since independence, part of which was broadcast on radio.32 Playwrights suffered a lot under Amin, but after 1986, small troupes flourished across Kampala and were fed by the prestigious Department of Music, Arts and Drama at Makerere.33 The first producer of the People’s Court, Michael Kisenyi, was originally a comedian. He studied music and theater at Makerere before working for Radio Uganda and later at Radio Simba.34 The Ugandan theater culture thus strongly permeated the airwaves.
Talk shows were not very expensive to produce, but they still required more resources than broadcasting only music. Generally, guests in the studios were not paid, but permanent panelists got an allowance, which could reach USh50,000 (around £10) per show for the most successful ones in Kampala. Ebimeeza required more resources than indoor shows. Some stations rented the space where debates took place, although many organized discussions in their courtyards. Numerous talk shows were sponsored by local companies, especially brewers and real estate agents. In these circumstances, and also when the airtime was bought by NGOs or politicians, stations could make money from political talk shows.35
Elections were a particularly fruitful time in terms of the creation of new shows. Politicians were ready to pay to get exposure and engage with listeners.
