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analyzer-r · 11 months ago

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Hot 102.7FM

"Playing Joburg's Best Old Skool and R&B"

The trend of defying the notion of radio stations pandering to modern music continues, this time in Johannesburg of South Africa with Hot 102.7FM. A relatively new radio station for the area, according to the little "About Us" blurb on their website at the bottom of every page, Hot 102.7FM (or just Hot FM here for convenience's sake) is a commercial radio station broadcasting to the greater Johannesburg area that specializes in broadcasting, according to its slogan, "old skool" tunes- mainly, as you will see, 70's, 80's and 90's music- as well as R&B. The website makes no mention of ownership as part of a network, and the Wikepedia article for the radio station pens its ownership as being under "Hot FM 102.7 (Pty) Ltd", meaning Hot FM is likely an independent organization.

Hot FM has its own litany of social media accounts, and boasts the most impressive social media following on Facebook so far, with around 112k followers. This same Facebook page puts front and center a banner proudly stating the station's achievements as Best Local Radio Station award winner twice in 2022 and 2023, showing Hot FM to be quite popular and successful.

The station's target audience, due to its preference in track selection, is likely to be for older/adult audiences, something that is reinforced on listening to the radio station itself- I listened from between 15:00-16:00PM SAST (South African Standard Time) on Thursday 28th December 2023, and I heard one of their stingers specifically asks, "Do you remember saving Princess Peach in Super Mario?" This is clearly meant to appeal to people who played the first ever Mario game, which came out in 1985!

Link construction is an interesting mix of very short, very quippy links between songs and announcing them, about twenty seconds long, and some longer two-minute links sprinkled throughout. They add a conversational and local feel to the show, talking about things like the atmosphere in Joburg, local festivities, news and competitions, and some of the quainter things like a neighbour snoring so loud, nobody else can sleep. Overall an enjoyable and non-intrusive presence between songs, and in-keeping with what's said on their About page:

Going back to track selection for a moment, I heard tunes such as "Flashdance...What a feeling", a classic that came out in 1983, paired up alongside early tracks from the Black-Eyed Peas, who despite being more prominent in the early 2000's did in fact see their beginnings in the mid 1990's. This is indeed in keeping with the station's own professed specialization, and in general the station kept up a very high standard of production with slick audio editing for the stingers between songs, up to the point of including select clips of what tracks to expect later in the show. Always informing viewers of what to expect and reminding them regularly what your show is all about is an effective means of ensuring they know if they want to stay or not sooner than they normally would.

Overall, I found Hot FM to be a very high-effort, high-production experience, effective in its purpose of being a classic hits-oriented station while adding a little extra content on top of things without feeling like it was detracting from its own format. I enjoyed listening, and clearly many others do as well, judging by follower numbers on Facebook- which makes sense, given Hot FM does a fantastic job of catering to its presumed audience.

You can catch Hot FM for yourself via the following link:

References:

Facebook.com (Date N/A) HOT 102.7 FM [Online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/HOT102.7FM?_rdc=2&_rdr [Accessed 28/12/2023]

hot1027.co.za (Date N/A) Hot 102.7FM [Online] Available at: https://hot1027.co.za [Accessed 28/12/2023]

Wikipedia.org (Last edited 22/11/2023) Hot 1027 [Online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_1027

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