At last, Radio Veritas

It has been a long, arduous road which Radio Veritas had to travel to receive the right to broadcast on the airwaves, as a radio station should.The decision by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to award Radio Veritas with a terrestial licence on medium wave is indeed, to borrow the station’s tagline, good news for a change.

After more than a decade of dealing with arcane legislation and regulation and protracted bureaucracy, Radio Veritas has been granted the all-important spectrum licence. The hard work of the Radio Veritas team, led by Fr Emil Blaser OP and supported by the Catholic community’s prayers, has finally paid off.

The bishops of Southern Africa also merit praise for their engagement on high levels, as do those parishes, institutions and individuals who canvassed signatures in support of Radio Veritas’ various licence applications. Even when these campaigns were unsuccessful, they doubtless encouraged and validated Fr Blaser and his team in dark times when hope seemed to be diminishing.

For those who over the past decade or so have given Radio Veritas their support, financial or otherwise, and for those who stuck by Radio Veritas through tough times, the fulfillment of the dream of more widely accessible Catholic radio is a rich reward.

Radio Veritas will now play a central role in the mission of the Church, a mission that hitherto has been impeded by its limited reach.

It is true, of course, that some areas of South Africa will still be unable to receive the station’s broadcasts (though the transmissions could reach Durban in the evenings). Modern technology might help relieve that limitation for some. For those with access to the Internet or Blackberrys or iPhones, Radio Veritas’ content can be streamed (this means that, with the right accessories, one can listen to Radio Veritas via the Internet even while driving).

For the staff and volunteers of Radio Veritas, this is an immensely exciting time. Ironically, being deprived of a permanent broadcast licence for so long has given Radio Veritas the time to sharpen its skills and gather the experience to attain new levels of competence.

With a broader audience will come a greater responsibility to create entertaining, edifying, professional and representative programming which should appeal to a cross-section of Catholics.

The station’s brief will be to enlighten the Catholic community by providing spiritual nourishment, to inform the public about activities and debates within the Catholic Church and to promote objectives for the greater social good. And all this must be accomplished through the medium of attractive programmes.

This is an enormous challenge which gives rise to difficult questions. For example, will programming in languages other than English, as mandated by Icasa, win or lose the station listeners? Will listeners retune into Radio Veritas when they have switched off on hearing a language they don’t understand, or music that alienates them?

Radio Veritas has no funds to spend on reliable market research. Many of the programming decisions will need to be based on intuition, experience and anecdotal feedback.

The station will need more than the public’s good will. Broadcasting is expensive business. The costs of transmission alone are steep. To that one must add the normal institutional overheads which even the most prudent accounting and extensive use of pro bono presenters cannot eliminate.

This means that Catholics must be generous in giving financial support to Radio Veritas in greater numbers than they already are.

As a radio station on the airways, Radio Veritas will be a flagship of the local Church. It would not serve the Church should its flagship flounder on the rocks of finances.

Radio Veritas will need to gather new listeners when it starts transmitting on medium wave in early 2012. At that point, Catholics must be strongly encouraged to make Radio Veritas a part of their lives, and to spread the word about it to others.