Pertinent issues in audience response in twende na wakati radio soap opera in Tanzania

This study was conducted to find out pertinent issues revealed in audience responses in the Twende na Wakati Soap Opera. The general objective was to examine how the audience react upon content of the programme by identifying major themes in the programme and investigate the extent audience identified with characters in the play. The study was conducted on randomly selected 70 Twende na Wakati audience letters between 2002 and 2008, ten letters from each year. The 70 letter writers represented a wide distribution by age, socio-economic status and gender. Some of the letters were written by middle income earners, students, religious leaders and peasants. The study revealed that the audience addressed seven major themes. These themes included HIV/AIDS, early marriage, teenage pregnancy, readmission of pregnant girls to school, female genital mutilation, gender based violence and spousal communication. Findings also revealed that the audience was able to identify characters such as Luvi, Cheupe, Kibuyu, Mzee Pembe, Koroma and Chiku. Letter writers addressed them directly by advising, praising, warning and sometimes scolding the characters. In brief the audience became involved in storylines and with characters in the Soap Opera