On air and online, South Africa’s Primedia Broadcasting is building looking to boost audience connections. The group has launched Eyewitness.co.za, a 24-hour news site building upon stories developed by the Primedia news teams, as well as acting as an outlet for user-submitted stories and citizen journalism.
Primedia operates four radio stations in Johannesburg and Cape Town — 94.7 Highveld Stereo, 94.5 Kfm, 702 Talk Radio and 567 CapeTalk. Stories on Eyewitness.co.za can start online and end up on air, or vice versa.
Primedia COO Ryan Till described the plans for the Web site in an interview with Bizcommunity.com:
“Eyewitness news doesn’t exist alone. In fact, as you know, it’s been built off the tradition of the radio station. However, one of the catalysts in this evolution of the brand is that listeners want to contribute more and more to this content. And the fact that the four radio stations have an interactive relationship with their audience means we are always calling for content, and feeding it back to them – on and off air.
“So in a way neither is more reliant than the other – this is a relationship where the two work content and share content, to the benefit of the audience. Big news stories broken by Eyewitness News become topics of shows on the stations – and feedback and contributions by listeners on air become new threads in extensions of stories on Eyewitness News.”
