Why KISS 100 Stayed Off the Internet for So Long

For the longest time, the Radio Africa Group have been averse to putting their content online. And during Aly-Khan Satchu‘s Mindspeak, the group head, Patrick Quarcoo, explained why it took so long.

“It’s been a huge challenge. If you go around the world, a lot of radio stations and even newspapers are migrating online. About five years ago, we had planned–actually six–to put Kiss 100 on the net. I started off and bought about 100 connections and in three days, nobody else could log on so I took it to 500 simultaneous connections.

Basically, it got chewed up. Took it up to 1,000, got chewed up. Took it up to 2,000 connections, it got chewed up. Now, all the guys in the South Africa, the States, all the Kenyans, were just going in, logging on and just leaving it on. And by the time it got to 2,000, it didn’t make any business sense to continue growing it.

And the challenege I had is, I couldn’t get advertisers to support it online. So, we’ve scaled back the online thing and we can re-look at it this year. I think once the cable–if it does get through Somalia–once it gets here, we’ll seriously reconsider that. And I think the dynamics of the business would change quite significantly.

And I think it would be much easier–in fact, we’re about to start rebuilding the Website. Now we’ve actually got the newspaper and you’ve got a constant information flow. The information flow is really good for bringing in spikes. I’m sure a lot of people here check 10 to 12 times what’s happened in the news. That’s one of the areas where there’s a real synergy between the print and radio: creating an entertainment information Website.”