Back in July of last year two of South Africa’s most high-profile DJs announced a new partnership, leading many to believe that Gareth Cliff and Tbo Touch were about to change internet radio as South Africans know it.

Fast forward to the final days of March and that’s dead in the water, with insiders speculating that “their business interests have grown apart”.

More on the separation of their brands from TimesLive:

…they had joined forces to start the country’s first ever 24-hour online music channel, TouchCentral.

They were inseparable as business partners, sharing offices and joining forces in the #DataMustFall campaign.

But suspicions of a split between the two and their brands were raised earlier this month when Touch announced that he was re-branding his internet radio station from TouchCentral to Touch HD.

At the launch of Touch HD this week, Touch explained to TshisaLIVE that he had to change his TouchCentral brand because of the confusion with CliffCentral.

“People confused CliffCentral and TouchCentral a lot, we needed to break away as much as possible. Gareth Cliff is ‘talk radio,’ TouchHD is music.  I had to always explain and answer questions like, ‘Are you owned by Cliff Central’ –no. The ‘central’ was the confusion and I’m glad with the revamp we didn’t just change the name we added bigger personalities because it has to be bigger than Touch, it has to also be bigger than Gareth,” he said

During the launch he did give Gareth a shout out, calling him onto the stage to thank him, but the omission of Cliff’s name from the subsequent press release sent the rumour mill into action:

Touch HD spokesperson Lulu Ndevu explained that they had not included Gareth’s name on press releases for Touch HD because he was out of the country at the time and had not authorised them to use his name in the release, but admitted that the pair’s brands had grown apart.

“Touch just realised that his and Gareth’s business models were completely different and the two services had to grow apart,” Lulu told TshisaLIVE.

And the response from Gareth’s spokesperson, Rina Broomberg:

[She said] “CliffCentral was always supposed to be an incubator to foster TouchCentral” and that it was part of the plan for Touch and his team to eventually go solo.

“We both felt that the re-brand was necessary and we have offered our assistance however we can. But at the end of the day, this is Touch’s service and Gareth is not involved at all,” Rina added.

Make of all that what you will.

[source:timeslive]