Journal Entry 23- Summary of conversations with supervisors at Bush Radio

With Adrian Louwe, our supervisor and the programme integrator at Bush Radio there was no single conversation about evaluation because we would anyway ask him and our show assignment presenters about our performance. It came as a part of the Monday meetings roundup where we would look back at the week that had happened.


When I had first suggested the idea of Tech Talk as a show Adrian said he liked it as it had never been done before at Bush Radio. After my first show he and Shiraz said that in technical terms my show needed a fine-tuning and adjustment in levels. They also said that my show needed to be longer for air-time. After that I developed new segments within the show to diversify the content. On one of the segments called “What Grinds My Gears”, where I interview people on their tech woes and try to resolve them, he said it was pretty different, even though I did borrow the title from Family Guy. But Adrian said he encourages as much man-on-the street content as possible and that I definitely added in. Adrian told me that I should make sure I did not endorse any product, which in a tech show can happen. I made an effort in the following shows to provide a good and a bad for each gadget, to make sure it did not seem biased to any particular brand. I also tried to instill as many African artists into the house music I played, to meet company policy. The only real thing he made me consider was the fact that a lot of the companies I contacted for the show were either in Pretoria or Johannesburg and calling to them conduct interviews cost money. I knew that Bush Radio's resources came from the community, but I often could not arrange for anything in Cape Town simply because there were not that many tech-based companies.


In terms of Sakhisizwe, Busisiwe Mtabane, the host, often said that my topic ideas were good and diverse. Though she would say that some of the interview subjects I picked were not articulate enough and often rambled on about a point, wasting airtime. Once I tried to get a priest to come on air for one of my first shows. She said that even though the station welcomed all kinds of perspectives, religion can be a touchy angle and so I should try and avoid bringing it at all costs in the media. I decided to cancel his as the interview topic was very sensitive and would have caused a bit of a ruckus with the other interviewee on the show. On my report on the World Economic Forum, where I interviewed the vice president for the Africa region of the World Bank for Sakhisizwe, she said she really liked the interview I conducted and the soundbites I brought in as they looked at some of the issues of resource management and bringing technology to rural areas, something that is hotly debated in the country.


On an overall sense though, Adrian said that our group of Emory students were perhaps the most productive one they had ever had.