The performative nature of talk on commercial music radio in South Africa : the cases of 5FM, Metro FM and 94.5KFM
Commercial Music Radio is one of the largest radio formats in the country, attracting millions of listeners per week, yet little academic attention has been afforded to its components such as music, talk and accompanying sounds that garner listeners. This thesis pays particular emphasis on initiating South African literature on the nature of talk on commercial music radio. There resides a general perception that music on music radio stations is the primary reason why listeners listen to radio, yet within music radio there are recognisable on-air personalities who speak, announce or link songs. In as much as these presenter voices are deemed 'salutary' reminders (Starkey & Crissell, 2009) of the live nature of radio, there is further evidence, within my thesis, that interrogates the significance of talk on commercial music radio through qualitative methods that seek to understand, describe and explain the social phenomena of on-air talk on music radio. Three South African radio stations ' MetroFM, 5FM and 94.5KFM' are used to foreground my research on the production, stylisation and performance of commercial music radio's talk.
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