Phat Joe back on the airwaves

“We needed to start with a splash – by creating a talking point for our listeners. That worked: we got people calling from listeners asking if he is really late,” said Lance Classen, head of talk and news at Kaya FM.

Phat Joe disappeared from the face of the earth after a short stint in 2002 at Metro FM and his TV show was canned by the SABC. He made a brief comeback last year as MD of Q Digital Cable Vision, one of the unsuccessful applicants which applied for pay TV broadcasting licences. He resurfaced again this year following rumours denied by Kaya FM that he was heading to Newtown.

Increased drive time

According to Classen, the breakfast show will, as of today, Tuesday 11 March, start at 5am instead of the usual 6am, as drive time has increased. People now leave their homes earlier than before because of load shedding and increased car volumes on the road.

The breakfast team will not be changing, with Steve Barker still doing business reports, Jeff Moloi doing sports and Thando Mkhize as traffic reporter.

“Regular features will remain as they have always been. Psychic Shannon, motivational speaker Billy Selekane and many more continue to be a part of the show. We will not be making drastic changes; we believe in gradual changes. We will be bringing in more celebrities because people have been saying that they want entertainment while on their way to work and we are planning to bring them that,” Classen told Bizcommunity.com.

Not rebranding

“I am not looking at rebranding myself, I am going to do what I have done over the years, which is giving people great entertainment,” said Phat Joe.

“The support I received has been amazing. Kaya is working at revamping and I am looking at how I can positively contribute my skills to the new energy. Within 30 minutes of me coming into the show we received about 100 emails mostly people asking why I was late. The response was overwhelming.”

When asked what he had been doing while in exile, Phat Joe commented, “I was under the rock working on various broadcasting projects, new media, and web broadcasting – that sort of thing. In fact, we are looking at taking the breakfast show into web TV where listeners will be able to watch the show live from the Kaya website.”

Phat Joe is highly remembered by some of the comments he made when he left e.tv, saying that the channel was "like Afghanistan being run by the Taliban”. Apart from ridiculing Felicia Mabuza Suttle, while at YFM, he often lambasted Metro FM and when he joined Metro FM, he targeted YFM.