Boss of Abeokuta-based Rockcity FM radio, Niran Malaolu speaks on the challenges facing the print media, why he pitched his tent with radio broadcast and what a 21st century media chief executive needs to survive. He spoke to Gboyega Alaka in Abeokuta.
One would have expected you to go into print journalism, having made a name for yourself in that area. Was going into radio always on your radar?
When I hear people talk about print, electronic and what have you, I marvel, because if you’re a properly trained journalist, you would have done what is called Mass Communication or Journalism; and usually you would have been trained in the media generally. For me as a person, maybe I have a background in print, but I always understood that for journalism to be business, you need to dig into research. As an editor, I was always worried as to why we have very low circulation in Nigeria. The golden days of Nigerian newspaper journalism was in the days of the Daily Times, when Mr Gbolabo Ogunsanwo was editor of the Sunday Times. At that time, Sunday Times was circulating close to 600,000 copies. As we speak, the entire print newspaper sales per-day in Nigeria is not up to 100,000.
Are you certain about that statistics?
Yeah, you can check. It’s the economy. The problem is that we give newspapers to vendors. For instance you’re a Lagos-based newspaper and you print 5,000 copies; then you put copies in a pick-up van on the road, with a driver and a circulation officer and they traverse the entirety of Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Ekiti and Ondo State and then they drop 500 copies each. The following day, they go back and bring back say 380 unsold copies. Now you have to look at the cost – petrol, vehicle maintenance, human resources and all. Add that to the fact that agencies are not paying. So where are the media houses supposed to be getting their income from? But unfortunately, we as journalists don’t talk about these. We only complain about not being paid salaries. Journalists need to come together and discuss. How do we deal with circulation problems? How do we deal with the issue of poor reading habit? That is very easy and within our capacity. If we give interesting news and features, they will definitely read. The other one that is technical is the issue of circulation, while the other one that is legal, is the issue of agencies not paying.
To answer your question, we did a research and found out that people tend to listen more to the radio. Don’t forget, the radio is a blind medium, and it doesn’t require that extra time you spend in reading newspapers. Once our mission is to inform our people, we thought the best thing to do is to go and meet them wherever they may be. We are a proper news station. We keep our people informed, do fantastic interviews and have fantastic current affairs programmes. And they do know that whatever they hear on this station is absolute truth.
Is Rockcity FM deliberately restricted to Ogun State? Your signal in Lagos for instance, seems a bit low.
I don’t think so. We’re licensed for Ogun state, but the signal gets to Lagos very well. However, I do not believe that everybody must be in Lagos. Why don’t we have city-based newspapers? The people we’re copying use the train to circulate newspapers. And it’s cheap. The Late MKO Abiola and a couple of publishers tried to have a collaboration, so that what the different newspaper vans are carrying can be done with just one vehicle, but it seems we lack the capacity for cooperation in this part, so that idea broke down.
The popular opinion is that there isn’t a strong enough market in Ogun State; is the advert patronage adequate?
If you’re talking in terms of advert patronage, the companies are in Lagos. So we have to go to Lagos, and those who have things to sell to those living here patronise us. When I was growing up, we had 12 states in Nigeria that were economic entities on their own. I remember Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Kano, Kaduna, Jos. And they were developing in every facets of development. Recall that we had Mighty Jets in Jos, when we talk about football; Enugu Rangers in Enugu; Stationery Stores in Lagos; Sharks in Port Harcourt; IICC Shooting Stars in Ibadan; we also had bank headquarters in most of these cities. But somehow, we have unitarised everything and it doesn’t augur well for the development of our country. And that is why we have ended up in this collect and distribute situation. Everything is concentrated in Lagos, and Lagos is saturated. We as journalists need to draw attention to this and generate solutions.
One of Rockcity FM’s strongest features is allowing your listeners to speak with your numerous phone-in programmes. What informed that style?
You need to study and understand what your people need or want, whether you’re a print journalist or electronic journalist. We did a research study and found out that Nigerians like to express themselves. When you have a nation of people who like to talk, it is very important that you aggregate those thoughts. On Friday for instance, we have what is called ‘Open Day’ on our Daybreak Show, where the people raise the agenda and talk about whatever they want. The people in that sense understand what governance is, but a lot of our people in government don’t understand what governance is. Government is there like a father to look after the need of the people. And any government that is not doing that is a failure.
You once boasted that RockCity FM will never owe salaries. What gives you such confidence, especially in a terrain where even bigger broadcasting organisations have been known to owe?
I have always being a reporter and I understand what it means to be owed salaries. I understand what it takes to go out and get stories, edit and produce a newspaper. A nation can only be built when you have a good media and media can only be made by good journalists. Nigeria has some of the most brilliant journalists. Unfortunately, the government thinks journalists are irritants. People who are doing such a job should not be made to lack to the extent that they’d be looking for round envelops. Our people must have a better deal, not raw deal.
What does it take to be a 21st century media CEO in a third world economy like Nigeria?
First of all I consider myself a professional student. You must learn to read and give knowledge every day. Several years back, we began with the print; and then the radio came and they said it was going to kill the print. It didn’t. Then television came and they said it was going to kill both the newspaper and the radio; again it didn’t. Now the social media or new media has come. Is it going to kill all the old traditional media? No. What we need to do is to have a new business module that is going to help us survive, and then go and meet our people where they are on the go. So a 21st century CEO needs to understand very well what the new generations are doing and then go and meet them there. You must keep abreast of developments in virtually every sphere, because journalism as far as I’m concerned, is life.
Talking about your prison experience, you were supposed to have been convicted of ‘information gathering,’ which literally was, doing your job. Didn’t that threaten your resolve as a journalist?
No. My foray into journalism was not by accident. I love my nation. You see that book there, ‘Why Nations Fail’ (pointing to his book shelf); it tells you that there is a need for us to believe in our country. I don’t believe that God made a mistake by creating us in this colour. We need to learn to understand and be conscious of who we are. And then God has given us certain resources to live by. We have to be able to harness them for the good of our people. For me every nation must go through a process of evolution. That I was part of the evolution of Nigeria is a sacrifice that was worthwhile. If it didn’t happen to me, maybe it might have happened to you or somebody else. The most important thing is that we should harness the lessons from it, which is: we wanted democracy and we got democracy. We need now to build on that democracy, to deliver the dividends to our people. Ensure that our children go to school and have good education. You and I are speaking to each other in a foreign language; I don’t think that should be. If we use our language, we would build this camera and your smartphone. So specifically, prison was hard. It is not an experience I will recommend for anybody. I think it got to my wife to the extent that she vowed that ‘If my husband ever got out of that place, he’ll never be a journalist again.’ But you see, I don’t know how to do any other thing. It’s journalism or teaching. So when I came out, I just said to her, ‘Look, it’s one of those things. We need to just move on.’ Thereafter, I went back to journalism school, got my PhD and started teaching. I marry both teaching and journalism together.
TV, are you ever going to go there?
Surely. The activities you’re seeing around, that’s what we’re preparing for.
You have a date yet?
I don’t know. I’m a Christian and God says walk with me. So I’m walking with him.
You work with a lot of young people. How do you manage their youth and energy?
One of the ways to build a nation is to invest in the young people. Teach discipline, integrity. Integrity is key for me; so personally I will not soil my name by taking bribe or giving bribe. Those who work with me know me. The sun’s not going to shine every day; you’re going to have some time when things are not going to run smoothly, you take it. That’s my philosophy. Hardwork, discipline, dedication. There was a young man who worked with me at Vanguard newspaper. He’s an editor there now. Anytime he saw me, he’d be crying, because I put him on his toes. But I used to tell him then that ‘Look, I’m training you.’ The last time he saw me, he told me ‘Sorry, now I know you were indeed training me.’ Nigerian youths are very energetic but their energy needs to be channelled.
