Michael Yao Wodui Serwornoo

This study interrogates how the oratory practices at the popular artisanal fishing community centre in Cape Coast, Ola CNN, contributes to socio-economic and political narratives that have underlined current broadcast programming in Cape Coast. The overarching argument is that the interactions at Ola CNN have influenced the episteme of local radio broadcasting, its mode of production and delivery. Ola CNN has become a space for the production of mundane community narratives and their circulation on radio stations. The prominence of local language broadcasters in Ghana is meaningless until it is connected with the very local institutions, spaces and milieus within communities that these oratory skills emanate due to the symbiotic narrative exchanges between the fisherfolks and local broadcast programming. Using Jurgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser’s public sphere as a framework to explore these narrative exchanges provides insightful ideas on how oratory culture is negotiated both on and off-air.