The Oppikoppi music festival, arguably the biggest local music event of the year, will be "broadcast" live on the Internet this weekend. Two things make the coverage remarkable - the remote location and the competition for readership.
Internet Goliath M-Web will compete with niche-player DigiNews, publisher of Pretoria Online (www.pta-online.co.za). Both say they will cover the complete event, and both believe they will leave the competition in the dust.
The size of the potential audience justifies the fierce competition. More than 13 000 people will gather for three days of original music, and according to SA music gurus, twice that number wish they could be there. Add the international audience to that and you get a large number of potential eyeballs.
Oppikoppi (which translates as "On the Hill") is annually held near Northam in the Northern Province. To say the area lacks infrastructure is an understatement. DigiNews also covered the event in 1998 and contingency plans included updating the live site via a cellphone modem, or as a last resort, to transport a physical disk to the nearest Internet connection. Things will be a bit different this year.
The big boys, ZA@play (the Daily Mail & Guardians entertainment) will stream two Webcams "practically around the clock" according to M-Web, which will handle the technical side of things. Another cam will be used for the occasional interview, and five journalists on the ground will provide content. "We bring global Web surfers to the heart of South African culture," says M-Web Studios executive producer Diana Streak.
DigiNews does not hold with Webcams. "Our readers will not be watching paint dry on some Webcam," says founder Jan Taljaard. Instead the company will rely on selective video and audio clips and digital photos from its team of, you guessed it, five reporters. "We will be covering all the stories worth covering," Taljaard vows.
ZA@play should have an ISDN line available while DigiNews will pray for a clear telephone connection. But the latter has a few cards up its sleeve and is not only counting on its experience of Oppikoppi. A track from the new CD by Afrikaans music icon Valiant Swart will be exclusively released on the site on Thursday, as will a track from local group Not My Dog.
The sites can be reached at http://www.diginews.co.za/oppikoppi99/ and http://oppi.mg.co.za.
Share