ABC Ulwazi - Radio Training and Production House

This paper shares the experience of ABC Ulwazi in creating educational and developmental radio programmes for community radio stations in South Africa. According to the authors, the majority of the ABC Ulwazi programmes use the entertainment-education (EE) format; examples include "Rebuilding Civil Society - Democracy Indeed", "The Magic Circle", "Talking Man - Talking Woman", and "Fight Against the Fist".

The authors explain that, in producing these programmes, ABC Ulwazi has learned that creating a well-researched, well-scripted, well-produced programme that uses familiar situations and colloquial dialogue is not enough. In addition, station "buy-in" must be ensured through short adult education courses for presenters and station managers. This helps them to "localise" scripts to address regional issues, problems, and languages. In addition, in order to extend the usefulness of the broadcast programmes, Listeners Associations are being established. These clubs create further opportunities for selected opinion-formers in the community to maximise the impact of the broadcasts. They can also disseminate the broadcast information to non-government organisations (NGOs) and schools as well as lobby for airtime on the local station for panel discussion programmes. Critically, Listeners Associations can provide structure, advice, and assistance to those individuals addressed by the broadcasts - i.e. victims of domestic violence, HIV-affected people, or unemployed youth.

The paper explores the concepts of 'Media Determinism' and 'Individual Volition', and states that it is time for a re-think - to move away from a blind faith in a single medium (the curse of media determinacy) to consider the entire social, economic, cultural and psychological context of the consumption of a medium and the ability of consumers to act. In essence, the effectiveness of even as simple a medium as radio does not reside in transistors, coils, and antennae. It is everything contained in the "mesh."

Considering these factors, then, what can we do to ensure that when the broadcast ends, the programme is not over? It must be understood that the actual broadcast of an EE radio programme is only the start of a complex communication process. The
actual broadcast should be woven into the "mesh" of communication activities triggered by the broadcast - and this is how ABC Ulwazi is striving to overcome the
challenges discussed in this paper.