Metro FM

Metro FM is a national radio station in South Africa owned by the SABC. The station broadcasts on FM Stereo as well as the DStv Bouquet Channel 801.[1]

This article is about the South African radio station. For other uses, see Metro FM (disambiguation).
For the North East England station formerly known as "Metro FM", see Metro Radio.

Metro FM
Broadcast areaSouth Africa, broadcast nationwide
FrequencyRegional (varies)
SloganIt's where you at
Programming
FormatUrban contemporary
Ownership
OwnerSABC
History
First air dateOctober, 1986
Links
Webcastwww.metrofm.co.za

History

The station started broadcasting in October, 1986 as Radio Metro to compete with the now defunct Radio Bop. Playing a mix of urban contemporary and bubblegum pop Radio Bop was able to reach black audiences in parts of the Transvaal by broadcasting on the AM band from the "independent" bantustan of Bophuthatswana where it was licensed. This prompted the SABC's then white management to launch Radio Metro which was put on air in about six months, from the planning stages.

The station launched the careers of a number of radio celebrities including, Bob Mabena, Shado Twala and Lawrence Dube.

Over the years the station has had a number of competitors, including in the very competitive Johannesburg radio market where two stations, Kaya FM and YFM, launched in mid/late 1990s have taken away some audience from Metro FM.

Metro sponsors the Metro FM Music Awards, the 2016 edition being the 15th. Known as Mabhena FM.

Broadcast time

Listenership figures
Estimated Listenership[3]
7 Day Ave. Mon-Fri
May 2013 5 713 000 2 110 000
Feb 2013 5 722 000 2 143 000
Dec 2012 5 763 000 2 171 000
Oct 2012 6 013 000 2 223 000
Aug 2012 6 252 000 2 317 000
Jun 2012 6 423 000 2 432 000
gollark: Maybe osmarksßspointers™ would fix this if I added built in charset conversion abilities
gollark: - can also shove in arbitrary HTML/CSS/JS for purposes
gollark: - CSS/HTML is quite nice when it works
gollark: - markdown renders to HTML mostly- remotely accessible
gollark: It's not inevitable as minoteaur merely abuses a browser as a GUI frontend.

References
  1. Metro FM Facebook Page (Info)
  2. The Annual Guide to Radio in South Africa (AdVantage 2012). Media 24. 2012. Archived from the original on 23 May 2013.
  3. SAARF RAMS (Presentations)


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.