Mansfield is back

Jeremy Mansfield

Jeremy Mansfield

Published May 22, 2014

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Munya Vomo

Before we got carried away with talk of his return to radio, Jeremy Mansfield (pictured) was quick to point out that it wasn’t a conventional return.

“I get a lot of people asking which radio station I am working for and I am always forced to explain that that’s not the case. I am now working for a company that produces packaged radio content which we will syndicate to various local radio stations,” he said.

For him this is the best way to make a comeback to the medium he has loved for ever. The process of syndicating his content means those who could not previously access him on radio will now be able to.

“Let’s say we make a show on sport or motoring. We will then approach Kaya FM or 5FM with the pre-recorded show. We give it to them for free. They then approach their own advertisers with the otherwise unavailable content and see if they can strike a deal. That’s how they make their money,” explained Mansfield.

All this will be done through the company X-Stream Visual Radio (XVR), a pioneer in nationwide radio syndication.

“The concept has done very well in the US and has never been tried here so we are excited to be bringing it home,” said Mansfield.

For him the syndication of radio content is a win-win situation for all the parties involved.

“Look at a situation like this. A financial paper like The Business Report in The Star will have a syndication company offer a story written by a renowned financial reporter for The Financial Times in the UK. The reporter will talk about a lunch he had with a top economist and how they paid with a Master-Card. Then The Star gets the story free from the syndication company because it makes its own money from its own advertisers which are embedded in the content it sells. In this case, MasterCard. Then The Star is free to use the free content to attract its own advertisers. The same deal is presented to all other newspapers and a wider pool of people get to read the otherwise unavailable piece.

“This is how we are doing business. We will cut across all radio platforms, from big national stations to small community ones. So if you miss one show on your station you can look around other stations and find it. At worst, you can come to our websites where you will access the podcasts of past material,” he explained.

Although as an individual Mansfield is a viable name, he has roped in some of the best-known people in radio and other fields to help with the content: Nick Mallet and Jake White will provide rugby content, former Bafana bafana player Mark Fish will offer soccer- flavoured content, Tshidi Bishop and Astrid Ascar will concentrate on business and musician Kurt Darren and former radio personality Tich Mataz will team up to provide the latest news in the music industry.

“With this concept in place we are looking at ushering our content to over a million people and, with that in mind, we have to have diverse content. I need to repeat that we are not a radio station, but a company that supplies content to radio stations,” said Mansfield.

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