From the Ibadan radio market landscape quantification to the specific strategies and tactics being used by the players, our analyst had previously established the contribution of the old and new radio stations to information acquisition and sharing among the residents. The previous analyses were largely driven by the preliminary outcomes of the ongoing new and conventional media convergence in Nigeria being carried out by our analyst and other colleagues in Nigeria and other continents in the world.
Leveraging the preliminary outcomes, this piece focuses on the great inequalities which were discovered in the course of interrogating the selected radio audience in Ibadan. From the engagement, it is obvious that radio stations in the city cannot do without appropriating Facebook for live streaming of their programmes. In our experience, we discovered that this medium is being used mostly for disseminating socioeconomic related programmes more than the political focused ones. It emerged that this is being driven by the audience’s interest in understanding the issues and needs around their social and economic life within and outside the city.
“Social media has now become a vital tool for any brand in every sector and media & broadcasting isn’t an exception. I’ll say the use of Facebook, Instagram and other social networking sites for radio broadcasting in Nigeria is a great development. It gives radio stations not just the opportunity to widen their listenership, but also a platform to individually monitor their growth,” one of the audience told our analyst and others.
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Another audience notes that “the use of Facebook and other social Media platform. The way I feel about it. It is a very good development as technology may be. It is a very good one. To have better sense of belonging, especially, if a presenter knows or understand how to engage his or her audience on social media platforms why joining him or her on live programmes.”
Despite the benefits, high cost of data subscription and availability of mobile phones that are compatible with Facebook live streaming remains the greatest challenges to many listeners in the city. The two challenges are mostly pronounced by the listeners who have relatively earn less than N50,000 monthly. “Facebook is good for live streaming but too expensive for 70% of listeners,” one of the listeners adduced. Another listener simply hinted that “watching radio stations live on Facebook is quite expensive viz-a-viz the cost of data.”
From the outcomes, our analyst proposes that the management of the radio stations could explore free data to the audience and possible collaboration with mobile phone sellers in the city with the intent of making the prices of the live streaming compatible mobile phone lower for the audience who could not afford those with high prices. The collaboration could be sealed after identification of loyal audience or through sales promotion of the phones during programmes audience listen to the most.
It is also imperative that the mobile communication service providers make data subscription cheaper for the audience in the city. Apart from this, service providers could also ensure free data for audience who usually watch live streaming radio programmes. This would primarily help the providers in their quest of making significant contributions to digital economy, where people are expected to be well informed of happenings around them for them to make strategic decisions towards their self-learning and development.