Has 702 made us more stupid?

Talk Radio 702 has managed, despite various plummets in listenership over the years, to remain Gauteng’s premier talk radio station. But isn’t it merely peddling the stupid and pedestrian views of the idle middle class back to itself, as a way to generate ad revenue?

I have listened to 702 on and off for the past 20-odd years. During the Eighties and early Nineties it was a voice of change, arguably one of the bravest media platforms in the country, giving voice to opinions for which people were still being shot and imprisoned.

On crackly medium wave, one could hear the closest thing to an anti-apartheid radio station within the borders of South Africa. It was inspiring and challenging, and presented a country in emotional and psychological turmoil as old-style racists clashed with the previously oppressed on the way to 1994.

Fast forward to today and 702 is something very different. Operating out of plush offices in Sandton, upstairs from sister station 94.7 Highveld Stereo where farts are considered sophisticated humour, 702 is nothing more (or less) than the official voice of the have-somes. Small-time business execs with hands-free kits and an opinion on economics and politics; ageing housewives and bored grannies ready to offer baking tips; and sports fans of all ilks ready to take on the role of armchair team coach at any opportunity.

In short, it’s a meeting place of the bored, the boring and the bleating.

I have reached the point where listening to the views of the average 702 caller (and they are all, without exception, average) makes me so angry I am in continual danger of losing control of my car and careening through the wall of one of the same average suburban homes these people come from. Naturally, the talk-show hosts employed by 702 must play their part in encouraging this endless stream of verbal swinery. One mediocre opinion seeks out its mate like a speckled finch in the quiet of a Highveld morning.

A few years ago, I was in a business meeting with a then-702 bigwig who said: “We are in the business of delivering listeners to advertisers.” That image has never left me: that idea of “delivering” unsuspecting folk on a silver platter to the hungry corporate wolves in exchange for advertising fees. Of course, he was right. And he was right about all media, even Thought Leader and the associated Mail & Guardian paper and site. The content is just a way to win some attention for the accompanying ads. But the blunt mercenary way he put this with no measure of concern for the content itself (and he was, and is, a popular 702 host) shocked me.

702 no longer rises above this in any way. Far from offering an alternative and challenging view of South Africa, it merely encourages the most tiresome and non-threatening viewpoints to be aired and re-aired, offered up for directionless debate, and then filed away in the end for the next day’s rerun.

The topics that most seem to consume the lives of callers on 702 are crime, Jacob Zuma, racism, reverse racism, crime, sport, health, education and how badly the government is doing with regards to all of the above. In between, if you are unlucky enough to tune into a “magazine”-type show like Jenny Crwys-Williams’s, you will have the opportunity to endure such robust content as who the best-looking rugby player is, your favourite memories involving a marshmallow and other such “light” topics.

And throughout is the almost seamless flow of 702 callers, a voice that, like many shades of beige mixed together, blends seamlessly into one. And what a dull, fearful, confused, insulated and mawkish voice that is. With every conceivable logical fallacy in their arsenal, these people can count as their singular talent the reiteration of one or other popular stereotype. You can actually hear the flock flocking around the topic of the day, each offering in turn another lacklustre peck at the subject.

Why is there a taste for this? We may as well ask why there is a taste for reality television, or social networking, which feed off the same fascination we seem to have with one another. To have someone publicly to support or attack is an enduring and distasteful human trait, particularly the latter. Perhaps I too am allowing myself to indulge in that bloodlust here.

I suppose ultimately my argument is not with this desire as it is with the colourless expression it finds on 702 Talk Radio. Advertiser and family-friendly, open to all and participation warmly encouraged rather than exclusive, the result is a display of the worst our society has to offer.

If Thought Leader is an attempt to give some smart, interesting and articulate thinkers a place to make themselves heard, 702 by contrast has no such ambitions for its content. Anything goes, as long as it is palatable and helps to sell the next bottle of fizzy cooldrink or unit-trust product.

Maybe 702 isn’t actually making us more stupid, but it’s certainly giving a soapbox to those who need — and deserve it — the least. And that is the sound of stupid if ever there were one.