By Eva Chipa
Sound TV & Radio CEO Jonathan Lyamgohn, also known as King James “the phenomenon”, broke the ice by reflecting on his early days in radio, which meant running errands for everybody for a good couple of years until landing his first radio show at the end of high school.
His presentation was pillared by 6 fundamentals which Lyamgohn expanded on. He explained how they operate a network of eleven radio stations and three television stations across two of Nigeria’s biggest cities.
Consolidated Media Associates Group where Lyamgohn is the CEO of Sound TV & Radio, boasts 8 brands under their belt, with the most popular being, Sound City which has its own DSTV channel (Channel 327) across the African continent. The company has ties in radio, digital, television and activation.
The brands listed are:
- Soundcity
- Urban 96
- Correct (broadcasted in Pigeon English)
- Spice TV
- On Max
- Trybe- (with over 300 tribes in Nigeria. This station is locally rooted)
- Access24 (is the news channel)
- On Tv
Initially, the company had started only as a content syndication platform but has grown significantly over the past twenty- five years. It ran for 30minutes on different channels across the country, which then grew to a 24 hours music platform. Three years ago they established a radio network of stations with the ambition of being the biggest in West Africa.
Lyamgohn elaborated that they have an average of 10 million listeners in Lagos alone.With times changing and the landscape changing through convergence, he says they always find ways to diversify while maintaining economic sustainability.
This according to Lyamgohn has helped them maintain a comparative advantage, he said; “the size of the economy dictates the size of a radio spectrum especially in commercial spaces.” What worked for them is that each brand was introduced at different stages and not all simultaneously.
In response to how to captivate a large yet restless market, he said that the solution is in thinking 4 dimensionally, meaning being on air, online, in the community and being in peoples faces. All this according to Lyamgohn can also be done by brand extension and having unique content each time.
Edited by: Bridget Lepere