Colleen Louw runs not one, but two radio stations that have been market leaders for a long time, writes Gasant Abarder.
Cape Town - I’m at the headquarters of Kfm and CapeTalk in Green Point on a guided tour of their new, state-of-the-art studios. It’s a vision of broadcasting's future.
I should have brought a Red Bull because my tour guide is CapeTalk and Kfm station manager Colleen Louw. I’m battling to keep up with her.
It’s the pace at which Colleen moves. This new look of the HQ is just the latest iteration of the business she knows so well.
Running a newspaper is a tough business. Running a radio station is tougher. But consider Colleen’s task: running not one, but two radio stations that have been market leaders for a long time.
Over nearly two decades, Colleen still exudes the energy and work ethic that has seen her ride immense changes in the media landscape.
“It will be 20 years next year when I came in after CapeTalk was around for a year. I worked for the V&A Waterfront management company before and I was part of CapeTalk’s launch.
“I got a call from Mike Wills who asked me to work for CapeTalk. I was travelling in Europe and I didn’t enjoy it at all so I came back. I took the job and I worked in marketing.
“I had one goal in mind: to break the perception that medium wave doesn’t rate in the Western Cape.
“I was up there dreaming against the big boys - against Kfm, Good Hope FM and Heart, which was then very new. My job was to think big and that’s what I did.
“We bought houses, we hijacked every event those stations were at. We used guerrilla’ tactics - the buzzword then in the early 2000s.
“All we did was try to break the stereotype that talk was for fuddy-duddies on AM.
“Talk had a role to play in the community and Cape Town and it was a force to be reckoned with.
“The station battled to make money in the beginning because it was an such an unknown. We sold it without an audience and we had no power behind it other than the heritage of 702, which is well over 30 years old now and an institution.
“It started off the back of that success of an independent voice in the media landscape.
“The irony was we would always be pitching ourselves against a big Kfm at the time, even though we weren’t really in the same ball game. The stuff we did, from a marketing perspective, was to rate with Kfm. It started to pay off.
“We attracted big names, we got amazing content out of the station, we did incredible things.
“Then ironically we bought Kfm after two attempts and I was given Kfm to manage too, because in that time our station manager died, quite suddenly in a car accident.
“At the age of 28, I was given CapeTalk and a few years later I got Kfm.
“I had a music and a talk station. And that was a journey.”
In the early days it was Colleen and another senior manager doing everything from human resources to programming to managing the news team.
Along the journey she married Shando and they have two boys Riley, 9, and Jack, 6.
Being a mom, wife and head of two dynamic radio platforms makes Colleen a busy woman.
She never switches off. She’s an ideas factory who doesn’t flinch when there’s a need in the community that the radio stations can service.
But more than that, she knows - almost instinctively - what the stations, their on-air talent and the businesses need, and when.
On Tuesday, Kfm’s breakfast show presenter Ryan O’Connor and his wife Karen welcomed baby Erin to the world. A few days ago, a longstanding staffer Barbara Carolus died shortly after her retirement.
Colleen was there for them and their families. Her life is a merger of personal and professional with which she has made peace.
But how do you take care of two very different radio stations - one a talk station and the other a music station - with their own unique personalities, brands and quirks?
“We were initially and still are very protective with identities. Cape Talk has an identity, and a market and an audience it attracts.
“Kfm has a different market, so they’re pitched very separately and that’s been a hygiene thing for us. It’s been a discipline to keep them separate.
“It’s reached two objectives: efficiencies in the business with one headquarters, one HR team, one IT team, one marketing team, one sales team, one news team - but forked out across the business.
“These platforms get serviced differently with a different style and DNA. That’s something ingrained in us here. We’ve reached efficiencies in the business because we saved a bucketload of money just bringing the two together.
“The people in the business were exposed to so much more. All of a sudden you go from being the brand guy on CapeTalk, to a brand guy on CapeTalk, Kfm and EWN... and sometimes 702 and Highveld 94.7 (the two Gauteng stations that are part of the Primedia stable).
“The opportunities for the station to grow, the people to grow, were just mind-boggling.
“There are people who work at four stations but are based in Cape Town.”
Now there are fresh challenges: staying ahead of the competition, the advent of digital radio, social media and online.
During my guided tour, Colleen shows me the shells of where online TV studios are being built. She has embraced the change. All of it.
“CapeTalk was my business. I was an entrepreneur then. I made CapeTalk my personal business and that’s how I saw it. I never got paid to do it like that, but I took it on with a marketing background and I had work experience at the Waterfront and that was an exciting start-up business.
“They had a vision and the stuff we’re seeing there now is what the vision was 20 years ago.
“But CapeTalk had a vision to be this amazing regional talk station with no one dreaming about it. So I took it on like I started the business and I sometimes had to tell myself this is not your business’. But there was nothing that I did that was too much for me to do. It was my business and that was my attitude.
“If I needed to be in at midnight, I’d do that. If I had to use my own car to pack speakers in my boot and pay for petrol I would do it. In those days - the glory days, I like to call them - we made the most incredible friendships because we had no resources, but we all had these big dreams.
“And we did it. We shot the lights out. I was given the job at 28 and I turned it down. They took two months to wear me down. I was the youngest manager, the most inexperienced person and I had John Maytham, Mike Wills ... given people like that to manage on-air and I thought, No way am I going to manage these okes! Are you mad?’
“But (Primedia CEO) Terry Volkwyn saw something in me that I didn’t even realise myself. I learned very quickly. I needed to move people forward, but I had to get results out of them and I couldn’t do it alone.
“In the beginning, I had very little support. Over the last 10 years, we’ve built a team of like 14 managers - captains who look after their own areas. It’s made life easier. I’m not the same person I was then.
“I’ve grown and learned to delegate and give off, and I’ve learned to hold people accountable.”
Many other people in Colleen’s position are trying to juggle personal life and career. But Colleen has given up the battle.
“My life at work, my life at home and my spiritual life is one life. I can’t be un-Colleen at work and un-Colleen at home. I’ve got to be Colleen. I’ve got to be true and I’ve got to be sure that I don’t compromise who I am no matter what situation I find myself in.
“It came with warts. Shando and I really battled to find our groove with this. I’ve got a lot of support outside of work. I’ve got two grannies on tap, 2km away from where I live. Shando runs his own successful business and is on call when I need him.
“I’ve got two amazingly independent children because I work. I don’t have to dress them, I don’t have to brush their teeth. It’s all sorted.
“They want to rule the world. They’re easy kids to get along with and I’ve got full-time help at home. All of that helps.
“I’m very particular that Colleen and my value system has to align with the space I find myself in, in everything I do.
“I compromised a lot of myself in my former years in management to try and be what this business wanted me to be.
“As soon as I started realising I’ve got to create my own vibe here, I can’t be defined by this place, it got so much better.”
“I don’t subscribe to the 50 percent, meet me halfway thing. I think you give 100 percent and the other party shows up. I see that time and time and time again.
“It’s like a marriage. I have to give 100 percent and my husband will show up. If I give 50 percent we’ll start counting who did and didn’t do what.”
Colleen is just 41 and has no intentions of stopping what she calls a “relentless pursuit” to keep the stations relevant.
What fuels her is the reward that comes with how she’s positioned the radio stations to be connectors in society.
One of those moments came last year when a radiothon raised R4 million for equipment for firefighters at the height of the devastating blazes in the Peninsula. The pledges came good with R3.999m paid into the account.
It’s one of four radiothons Colleen has driven and they stand out amongst her best work.
“My rule of thumb is if I’m not adding value to this business, I must go. It’s moving so fast and maybe it needs a different kind of leader. That’s cool. I’m cool about the fact that I might not be the leader, but I’m adding value and when that value is up one day, I’m gone.
“I am going to dip my toe in the tertiary world again. I have to, for me, not for anyone else. And I feel like I had this vision that I want keep on working for a long time still. I’m not ready to give it up yet. I don’t think I’m going to get this kick easily. This is a kick.”
But there’s always time for a prank. And Colleen is usually the main instigator.
“We prank as a culture, so we have to prank people here. The challenge is out because I’m chief prankster here. We’ve had spouses and children involved and it becomes quite elaborate. We have a voice modulator that changes our voices and we play it out at staff meetings. It’s part of the culture. You’ve got to take one for the team every now and then. Those are the fun moments.
“I’ve met the most incredible people - people that I’ve worked with, or guests coming in or celebrities. It’s been humbling in a lot of ways, it’s been special. I’ve just met Thuli Madonsela for the first time over the weekend. She was amazing.
“I wouldn’t get to interact with all these people easily in another role. I’ve grabbed the relationships I had with people and I hold them dear.
“I work hard at that.”
* Gasant Abarder is the editor of the Cape Argus.
Cape Argus