Lotus FM picks up the pieces after 90-10 policy
The station has resumed playing Indian music in an effort to regain the listeners and advertisers it lost as a result of Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s disastrous local content policy
Durban-based Lotus FM has begun the difficult job of reversing the damage done by the SABC’s local content policy. The controversial 90-10 policy of former SABC chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng, implemented about a year ago, was disastrous for Lotus, which lost listeners in droves — and millions of rand in advertising revenue. Now, the station has resumed playing the Indian music that made it popular, and is approaching advertisers to woo them back and stem its financial losses. Some advertisers said when the policy was introduced last year that they were forced to pull their adverts from Lotus FM because research had shown their target audience was no longer listening to the station. Lotus FM’s target listenership is drawn mainly from the Indian community. Four months after the sudden introduction of Motsoeneng’s policy, which decreed that 90% of the music played on radio stations had to be local, Lotus FM had lost about 130,000 listeners — falling from an average 390,000...
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