Quality Radio

South Africa turned 18 years old this past week and on Yung Amplified and we were celebrating the event and getting to grips, with what it means. Thobani and Ziphozinhle were tasked with interviewing people in their community about what Freedom Day means in contemporary South Africa. Both these young people came away from their interviews with new knowledge of where this country comes from.

Judging from Thobani’s pacakage of his discussion, he learnt about the kind of conditions that black people lived under during apartheid. For Zipho it was the events of 27 April 18years ago that stood out for her. She was also rather unimpressed with the little effort that is made to inform young people about this day.  She suggested that more should be done in order to ensure that people are made aware of the importance the day.  Zipho and Thobani also suggested that the municipality could host functions which will serve as awareness campaigns. They added that it would be important during these functions food to be served  to the public, not only as a strategy to attract numbers but because people are poor and hungry.

Joining us in studio was Richard Pithouse of the politics department at Rhodes and Mr Macanda a history teacher at Numbulelo High School. Anesipho was assertive and articulate when interviewing these gentlemen about the meaning of Freedom Day, elections in a democracy and the future for South Africa. I think the chance to do live interviews allows the Upstarters to put into practice everything that we have we’ve taught them about interviewing techniques, particularly with regards to asking follow up questions. My favourite part of her interview was a follow up question to Richard Pithouse about what he meant by “amazing opportunities available to young people of the country”. This question invigorated the interview and it made Richard loosen up and engage with the interview in his personal capacity. I thought Anesipho would be intimidated, interviewing two learned grown-ups but you could see she was listening attentively and trying to make the most of her interview.

                                           Anesipho speaking to Richard Pithouse and Mr Mcanda

Our funny feature doesn’t have an official name yet. We came to the resolution that if no one suggests a more funky name for it, we will have to stick with Thobani’s not-so-funky “funny kids”. Anelisa was our comedian for the day, she read jokes that Roche had sourced. Sinovuyo gave us a review of the Upstart paper.

                                            Sinovuyo reviewing the Upstart paper

The Upstarters are starting to interrogate the material they’ve produced for their show. During the debrief session they don’t shy away from being critical about the their show as a whole. They used this session to unpack Yung Amplified from the packages that were played, in-studio discussions and the guests we’d invited.  They raised points about how the show was not as fun as the previous show and that the missing anchors affected the show. Something that caught my attention was that they want the show to be informative as much as it is fun and entertaining. I guess this is a challenge for the team, to find a meeting point of these elements.

Something we haven’t tapped into as the team of radio students, is reading the Upstarters’, blogs to see if there are any insights we can take from the reflective piece. This should help with the production culture of Yung Amplified and also for the Upstarters to know that their blogs are contributing towards creating rich content for the show.