In 2002 the Springbok Radio Preservation Society of South Africa was created for the archiving & preservation of Springbok Radio audio material. Springbok Radio was the first commercial radio service in South Africa which started in 1950 & sadly closed in 1985. No effort at the time was made by the official South African Broadcasting Corporation regarding the archiving of Springbok Radio material & most of the programming was deemed lost. With the creation of the Springbok Radio Preservation Society in 2002, all efforts were made to recover as much of the Springbok Radio material that had survived. Thanks to a small handful of fans that recorded programmes off-air privately & also by contacting producers, writers, actors, etc, material started coming in. The material was also sourced from overseas & at great costs, the material was returned to South Africa. In many instances from acetate transcription discs & reel to reel tape. In 2004 the operation started to restore the material to preserve it for the future & in 2008 the official audio streaming service of Springbok Radio Digital was created by the Preservation Society to give the many Springbok Radio fans the chance to listen to their favourite programmes again. This service was funded by the Society at great expense. In 2009 the Springbok Radio Preservation Society was accepted as a member of the International Association of Sound Archives. At the time the only private sound archive in Africa accepted by the association. In 2011 after negotiations with the SABC, the service & restored materials were handed over to the SABC Sound Archives who would continue the audio stream & preservation. The Preservation Society, however, continued at own cost to restore, locate & archive material. Material was also supplied to local community radio stations at no cost & also to a handful of stations in the UK & Australia for broadcast. in 2015 the Audio Service of Springbok Radio was created as an Internet Radio Service & very soon the service has grown in the last few years to quite a substantial amount of weekly listeners. At no point was any listener asked for funding to keep both the Internet Service going or to contribute to funding preservation efforts. With the cost of equipment & correct storage etc, I now have to ask for funding to keep the preservation efforts going on & also to maintain the Internet Service. Any contribution would be appreciated, how small you might feel that your contribution is, every little bit will help.
