-
Reveals What He Went Through With Eagle 7 Sports Radio
Many people don’t know that ace footballer, Segun Odegbami (MON) owns a radio station. We can tell you that for free. He does. In fact, the big news is that his radio station called Eagle 7 Sports Radio 103.7 FM, is a year old. The 1st anniversary was last week. Odegbami told City People Daily a few days ago that Eagle 7 Sports Radio has been an incredible journey in patience, perseverance, hard work and belief in the reward of integrity by the creator of the universe. “Despite all the challenges of a start up and the burden of waiting for 18 years to secure a licence, the Eagle with the Number 7, has continued to soar and rise above all challenges, obstacles and hurdles. The specialised broadcast station is one year old”.
“I thank all those that have supported and being a part of this project on a mission to take global listeners (and viewers), with the use of technology, new media and ingeniously creative and entertaining content, to places in broadcasting they have never been before”. Eagle 7 Sports Radio 103.7 FM is broadcasting out of the ancient Yoruba City of Abeokuta, in Ogun State.
And a few days ago, the station got a befitting birthday gift. The station has hit the 2 million listenership global audience. Odegbami says this is the miracle of the past 28 days, without any boosting or external influencing, purely achieved organically, on the merit and strength of our Sports and Afrocentric entertainment content”.
How does he feel celebrating the 1st anniversary of his station? “I am happy at what we have been able to do with Eagle 7 Sports Radio. Its a fulfilment of a dream, and because of the manner in which it finally happened, it was a mixture of disappointment for 18 years and then from the blues, came an approval, and then, great happiness that it finally came to be, because I applied for the Radio licence 20 years ago, at the inception of the issuance of Radio licences. The 1st group was AIT (Raypower), Brilla Sports and all that.”
“After that came the 2nd group. I applied. That was in 2002. It was not approved until 2021. You can imagine my excitement and relief. Unfortunately, when it was approved was during COVID-pandemic. So, we couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t go out to raise money. And we had to start anyway. So, it was very challenging, trying to raise the resources to establish it. I had to start from scratch.”
“The feasibility report that we did in 2002 had become obsolete. So, I had to get people to get me a new one and I did not have the money to just go ahead and just buy the equipments needed and pay for the licence. So, I devised an ingenious means of raising money through a few friends in such a manner that they wouldn’t feel it at all.”
“Just set aside some change, some money, put it in my care and together we would own the Radio Station. I got a few friends to do that. It happened. We didn’t look for much money to start. I had a lot of the equipment, through my previous work in Radio and Television in my studios in Lagos. What I didn’t have were the major ones like Transmitter and some of the sophisticated studio equipments of nowadays. So, it wasn’t so difficult for me to assemble what I needed.”
“It took slightly over a year to get it going. But finally on July 7 last year, we started and its been one year.”
How did he coin the brand name Eagle 7 Sports radio? Why the choise of name Eagle? Why the number 7? “That is the biggest national brand of Nigeria; part of our national identity, on our coat of arms, and name of our national football team of which I was a prominent member. The 7 is the number I wore in that team, hence Eagle 7 Sports Radio”.
What has the experience been? “You don’t want to know how we have survived through that one year. I have been into all manner of small, small businesses, the smallest kinds of business. In all my experiences doing bits and pieces here and there. This has been the most challenging for me, mainly because of the environment, the times we are in now. It is very, very difficult for a lot of people to survive, not to talk of going on radio”.
“I have discovered that Radio is not what it used to be. The media has changed completely. The entire media has changed completely. Even for those of you in print, you know what it is. Those in Television are lamenting, because social media platforms and media generally have taken over. Now it is the information super highway on the internet and if you are not there you are not in business. So, the module has changed. That was when we came in, to meet this new situation, at the heart of it. So, we had to re-strategise, and again our own Transmitter is in Abeokuta. The licence we got was for Abeokuta and that environs. So we couldn’t reach Lagos. And that means our local audience is limited to that environment. And once you are not in Lagos, then it poses a new kind of challenge. But from the inception, we knew that the way to go, ultimately would be to go digital, to go online. And so, we have pursued that in past one year very vigorously, expanding our reach, and producing contents that will be attractive to the international community (the global community) and promoting it as massively as we can, without putting money, because we didn’t have money. And the response in terms of audience, listenership, has been awesome.
But in terms of patronage, it has been very, very limited. Of course, like any other start up you have to convince clients that you can sustain the business, that you are not there to just start and die, which is the case with so many media organisations. They start, they find that it is not profitable, as you think, then you drop off. That is the story of so many media outfits. But in our case, we had to prove that we can sustain it. I can tell you, that from the 11th month now, the tide has changed.”
“So for the 1st time, we have started to receive very, very encouraging support (patronage) from different organisations and they asking questions and we are reaching out to them.”
“Now, we are heaving a sigh of relief. But for the past 1 year, my BP has gone up. You know, I am an Ambassador of Non-Communicable Diseases, in Nigeria and the prime one is High Blood Pressure. I am not to have it at all. It should not be near me at all. (Laughs) Unfortunately, this thing is driving me crazy. Like I said, it has to do with the environment. There is no power in Abeokuta and a large chunk of Ogun State, have that perennial problem of power.”
“That was one of the many challenges we had when we started. First of all, our studio is not co-located with the Transmitter. Our transmitter is high up on the hill. Our Studio is down below in the heart of Abeokuta. So, we have to power both sides. At each place, we had to set up a hybrid of power. Public electricity, solar panels on your roof and the Inverters and then you support with generators. And the power is so epileptic. In fact, it hardly exist. So most of the time you are on generator. The solar panels and that technology hasn’t been perfected because we tried 2 different persons. In fact, in one case, within 9 months, all the 4 big batteries, that we bought have gone down. Now, the batteries are almost half a million each. To replace them is a problem now. And there are challenges. You don’t have that kind of resources.”
“Solar panels, solar batteries, and that inverter system has a life span. They are not meant to be your major supplier of power. They are meant to supplement your main supply of power. But they have become the major source. We are running diesel to even power the inverter and the cost of diesel shot up. On the hill, we use petrol generator, 7.5 KVA. The cost of petrol also has shot up.”
“And most of the time, you are on it anyway. So, the power supply and the cost of providing power has been astronomical. I don’t know how we have survived it. Well, we are in the business and thank God, it is like we have hit the teething point. We have come to that turning point and things have started to improve tremendously. I am very grateful. That is more or less the story of my life in the past 2 years, since this station started”.
Send Us News, Gist, more... to citypeopleng@gmail.com | Twitter: @CitypeopleMagz
