Everyone's listening
According to Afstereo's AirCheck, a radio and television tracking service, which provides same-day spot and song airplay data, in May 2010, the World Cup song, Waka Waka by Shakira, featuring local group Freshly Ground, was the top of the World Cup pops in terms of radio and television airplay. It uses highly accurate wave-pattern recognition, which matches audio to 'fingerprints' of thousands of commercials and songs.
Monitoring 30 radio stations and 6 television channels, an analysis was done of the number of plays of songs across these channels in May 2010. After the 518 plays for the hit song, the next big one is Rise Up Mzansi - SABC 1 All Stars with 303 plays and in third place, Kick It Up - Don Clarke with 209 plays.
It must be noted that "Rise Up Mzansi" recorded a higher than usual rotation due to the song being extensively used as a background bed and clip on Thobela FM. This means that the song was prominent enough to indicate on AirCheck, but that the song was not necessarily broadcast in its entirety.
The World Cup Day That Was, a regular featured launched on 11 June by the Daily Maverick, ensures that fans get a once-a-day digest of all the news about and related to the event. It is published well before the sun rises every morning and linked from the First Thing newsletter, so nobody need ever venture out of the house without being ready for any World Cup water-cooler conversation.
"When we launched, we promised to be a giant social currency ATM and The World Cup Day That Was is a critical part of that," says The Daily Maverick editor Branko Brkic. "We never want our readers to seem ignorant of important events, and there are few events as important as the World Cup right now."
For those who need more than just an overview, detailed, in-depth match reports on every single World Cup game are published on the website www.dailymaverick.co.za within minutes of the final whistle.
Johannesburg resident, Adrian Loveland, decided three years ago he would create a film drawn from the frustrations and energy of his hometown to create 'Unhinged', a documentary that deals with Johannesburg's reputation as one of the most dangerous cities in the world on one hand, and its magic as a melting pot of entrepreneurs and opportunity on the other.
The documentary, written and directed by Adrian Loveland and produced by Pascal Schmitz, has been launched prior to the World Cup, to provide his unique view of Johannesburg through an honest, quirky and sometimes manic personal snapshot of today's city.
With rapid narrative, dry humour, curious insights and trivial factoids, Loveland, the slightly eccentric 'tour guide, takes the viewer on a trip through the city, engaging with an interesting mix of Joburgers along the way, including Robbie Brozin (CEO of Nandos), Ferial Haffajee (editor of the City Press), Justice Malala (political analyst) and Victor Kgomoeswana (MoneyBiz founder).
Loveland comments, "The film does not try to avoid the problems or dish up all the answers. My aim was to provide a representation that enables viewers to get closer to the truth of what Johannesburg really is. I wanted to show both sides of Johannesburg, and hopefully leave the audience feeling positive and excited by the obvious energy and potential of the city, while acknowledging that we have lots of work ahead of us."
The 52-minute documentary is distributed through Soul Candi on DVD at R39.95 and will be available through Amazon.com and Kalahari.net. View the 2-minute trailer on YouTube.
